by Allyson Chiu
Sep 21, 2025
When Ramón Méndez Galain’s phone rang in 2008, he could hardly believe who was on the other end of the line.
It was the president of Uruguay, Tabaré Vázquez, and he was calling with an offer: Would Galain, a self-described simple university professor, be interested in serving as the country’s energy secretary?
The invitation was a “tremendous surprise,” Galain recalled. “I immediately understood that I wanted to do it, but it took me some time in order to be brave enough.”
Galain’s decision to take the job more than a decade and a half ago not only changed his life, but also set Uruguay on a rapid path to becoming one of the world’s clean energy leaders. Under his leadership, the small South American country went from relying heavily on fossil fuels for electricity production to establishing a stable grid powered almost entirely by renewable sources, including water, wind, solar and biomass waste.
“We proved that yes, it is possible to manage a power system with almost 100 percent renewables,” said Galain, 64, who was Uruguay’s energy secretary from 2008 to 2015 and now runs a nonprofit organization focused on helping governments achieve a similar transition away from fossil fuels.
His new vision, he said, is to see Uruguay’s success story replicated in other countries — an ambition that has earned him recognition among energy policy experts and climate groups. On Monday, Climate Breakthrough, a San Francisco-based global philanthropy, announced Galain as one of the recipients of a $4 million award, which the group says is the largest climate prize for individuals.
“Climate Breakthrough is really focused on identifying these exceptional individuals who have out-of-the-ordinary ambition and capacity to turn their ideas into reality,” said Savanna Ferguson, the group’s executive director. “Ramón has clearly demonstrated he has exactly that.”
Transforming Uruguay
When Galain returned to his home country in the early 2000s after working abroad for more than a decade, Uruguay was in the midst of an energy crisis. Oil and gas prices were climbing, and the nation, which relied largely on hydropower and imported all its fossil fuels, was struggling to meet increasing energy demands.
One solution proposed at the time was to install a nuclear power plant, and Galain, a particle physicist who had been studying what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang, said he felt his academic background could produce useful insights to Uruguay’s energy conundrum. But his research revealed to him that nuclear power was not the solution. Instead, it became clear to him that renewables would be the key to sustainably powering the country of more than 3.3 million people.
In the years that Galain served as the country’s top energy official, a period that spanned two administrations, Uruguay installed dozens of renewable energy plants. Within just five years after he took over, the country was able to almost entirely decarbonize its grid, with 98 percent of its energy coming from renewable sources. Wind energy alone can produce up to 40 percent of the total electricity consumed in Uruguay in a year, he said. The country has also added sustainable biomass and solar power.
Last year, Galain said, Uruguay’s electricity mix consisted of 99.1 percent renewables.
“We have been running a system which is much more sovereign, which is much cheaper, with reduced cost by a factor of two, and we created a lot of jobs,” he said, noting that his plan resulted in 50,000 new jobs, which accounts for about 3 percent of Uruguay’s total labor force. “Now we are exporting renewable energy surpluses to our two big neighbors, Argentina and Brazil.”
Spurring an energy transition
It took some time, Galain said, for him to understand what the real factors were that drove Uruguay’s success.
The first element was a long-term transition strategy that was backed by the entire Uruguayan political system, meaning the election of a new administration would not result in significant disruptions, he said. Achieving this widespread support relied on making a strong case that laid out the benefits of moving to renewables and used data to refute common beliefs that ditching fossil fuels in favor of a power source like wind would lead to greater grid instability and be more costly.
“One very important tool that we developed was a simulating tool,” he said, which analyzed grid stability, wind and solar intermittency, and how different technologies could work together. This tool, he added, helped “spread the message to show that there was a different reality.”
Then it was critical to create conditions for change to happen, he said. That included modifying the country’s entire energy system — from infrastructure to regulations and market design.
Without making these changes in countries that are looking to transition away from fossil fuels, Galain said, “we are asking renewables to play with rules which are not adequate for them, and so they will never win.”
“We have to understand that we really need to change systems in order to make wind and solar, which are the cheapest option today in a large majority of the world, be the dominant part of the system,” he said.
Galain said his plan also involved working closely with all private and public stakeholders in Uruguay to understand what they needed.
“We have to have everybody involved,” he said.
But Uruguay also has some unique characteristics that aided its swift transition to renewables, said Amanda Maxwell, managing director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s global division.
For one, Uruguay is a small country — about a quarter the size of Texas — that does not have any domestic fossil fuel reserves and had historically relied heavily on other countries.
“Just not having to import fuels has a big economic and national security benefit to it,” Maxwell said.
“Political will, stability, the geology and geography of the country were all in favor of it,” she added. “And there were benefits for the country beyond just reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
A model for other countries
Maxwell and other experts said Uruguay should serve as an example of what could be possible as leaders around the world continue to grapple with meeting electricity demands and hitting climate targets.
“The big picture of what they’ve been able to achieve is pretty remarkable and sets them squarely ahead of the pack globally in terms of demonstrating leadership toward net zero,” she said. “They created a plan and they achieved it.”
Uruguay’s approach could be particularly applicable in other countries without access to coal, oil and gas, or small islands, said Angela Pachon, a special adviser to the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
While it might be trickier and take longer to transition countries that have more of their own resources, Pachon voiced support for Galain’s efforts to draw on Uruguay’s experience to encourage a shift from fossil fuels. In 2023, the Kleinman Center awarded Galain with its Carnot Prize, which recognizes contributions to energy policy.
“Sometimes there is just lack of vision from policymakers,” Pachon said. “When you have someone who has the experience and can show that this is possible and how much benefit this brings, the likelihood of convincing people is higher.”
Galain’s nonprofit, Ivy (pronounced ee-vee), aims to advise governments on how they can start transforming their energy sectors. The group has worked with about a half-dozen countries, including Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Colombia.
With the funding from the Climate Breakthrough award, Galain said he hopes within the next decade to help at least 50 countries embark on the path to more clean energy.
“We want to prove that an energy transition can be possible in different geographies and can work in different national energy and political contexts,” he said. “If we go to a couple of different countries in Latin America, plus a couple of countries in Asia, plus a couple countries in Africa, then we’re going to show that it’s not just an Uruguayan unique story.”
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