Decarbonizing Chile

From Fossil Fuels to Renewables: Is this Chile's Energy Revolution?

Nicholas Triozzi

September 18, 2023

Aerial view of Javiera Chanaral solar plant in Chile

Decarbonization in Chile

Chile’s goals to become carbon neutral by 2050 will require decommissioning of fossil fuel infrastructure. The IPCC has called for carbon neutrality by 2030 for wealthy countries and 2040 for all countries. Chile has ample solar, wind and mineral resources, including lithium and copper, needed for low-carbon energy production on a global scale. But mining is detrimental to the environment.

In recent years Chile announced plans to convert 70% of its total energy consumption to renewable energy by 2030 and to become carbon neutral by 2050.

In 2022 Chile's use of fossil fuels accounted for 47% of the electricity it produced. The remaining 53% was produced using hydroelectric power generation, wind, and solar energy.

Click to activate the map and hover over the pie chart for a breakdown of Chile's 2022 power sources.

In 2022, Chile produced 44 Terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity using a combination of wind, solar, and hydroelectric sources, enough to meet the energy demands of any one of the 30 different countries shown in the map to the left.

Select a country to see energy demand and emissions for 2022.

To become carbon neutral by 2050, Chile must continue to dramatically reduce it's emissions.

Emissions from Chile's electricity generation in 2022 is estimated to be 27.7 metric tons of CO₂. The largest source of emissions is coal (average 15.9 mtCO₂ per year) while solar and wind contribute on average just 0.005% of the total emissions each year.

Explore emissions by country, year, and power sources in the interactive chart to the left to see how Chile's emissions compare with other countries globally.

Lithium & Copper Mining

Lithium and copper are valuable minerals for reducing fossil fuel dependency globally. Chile is one of the world's largest producers of these minerals, which are used to conduct electricity and in batteries (for electric vehicles and electricity storage). However, the processes involved in obtaining lithium and copper from the earth are harmful to local ecosystems.

How is Chile's lithium and copper production at odds with its stated goals of reducing fossil fuel dependency?

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Lithium extraction from the Atacama salt flat has expanded considerably, particularly after 2010, as visible in the time-lapse video to the right.

Click play on the timeline to the right to watch the 40-year transformation of the Salar de Atacama.

Brine pools are built on the hard salt flat crust. Mineral-rich brines are drilled from underground and then evaporated by the intense desert sun over several months, leaving concentrated chemicals to be collected, transported, and refined.

The increasing demand of lithium on the global market has intensified the ecological impacts of these processes.

A view of a brine pool of a lithium mine on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert, Chile, August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/File Photo

Chile is the world’s largest producer of copper and home to Escondida Mine -- the world's largest copper mine by capacity, shown to the right in false-color satellite imagery from 1988 and 2023.

Dozens of copper mines, both open pit and underground, are located across the Atacama Desert. Mining accounts for more than a third of Chile's electricity consumption.

Use the slider in the map to the right to see the footprint of the world's largest copper mine.

Extensive quantities of water used in lithium and copper mining impacts migration patterns of vicuña and flamingo and kills microorganisms important to the broader ecosystem. Draining water from the desert also puts bofedales and salt flats that sustain wildlife and Indigenous pastoralists and farmers at risk.

Use the map to the right to explore how various ecoregions are impacted by copper and lithium operations in Chile.

In April 2023, President Gabriel Boric announced plans to expand mining through a national lithium company . Boric claims the move could boost Chile’s economy and protect the environment but not all Chileans are in agreement.

Environmental activism has been successful in reducing Chile's carbon footprint. Continue to the following section to explore how activists intervened in the development of coal plants in Chile.

Closing Down Coal

Environmental activism plays a central role in Chile's transition to low-carbon energy. Prior to 2022 coal provided the majority of the country's power. Activists ran successful campaigns against new coal plants, thus contributing to the development of new solar and wind power generation sites. Unfortunately, for many communities the damaging effects of fossil fuel and industrial pollution will take decades to overcome. A case in point is Ventanas. Read more below.

Coal is the largest fossil fuel contributor to CO2 emissions in Chile .

As of September 2023, 9 plants have been decommissioned
Many of the operational plants are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2025, but for eight plants no decommission date has yet been announced.
Activism helped prevent the construction of new coal plants at 12 locations in Chile (labelled “cancelled”). These had all initiated environmental impact review before they were cancelled.

Activism helped prevent approximately 27.5 million tons of CO₂ per year from being released into the atmosphere.

Decommissioning in Action

The Ventanas Industrial Complex, located on the Pacific coast north of Valparaíso, has irreversibly transformed this once picturesque beach town into a dense hub of factories owned by international and Chilean corporations. Decades of material processing has resulted in severe environmental damage and major public health concerns. Activists have made some progress towards shutting down some of the operations but the work is far from finished. Read more below.

The Ventanas Industrial Complex has expanded continuously since 1966, and today is home to twelve companies that operate energy, copper, petrochemical, mineral processing and port facilities here. This picturesque beach town is one of Chile’s most heavily polluted sites. Locals suffer from recurrent acute intoxication events and some of the highest cancer rates nationwide.

Hover over colored areas to see which companies own operations in the Ventanas Industrial Complex.

Despite such high rates of pollution that have harmed the local population, since 1997 the Chilean environmental authority – through the environmental impact assessment process – approved 68 new industrial projects here. The studies submitted as part of these assessments have never taken into account the complex as a whole. Many studies used questionable methods to estimate pollution and its potential to cause harm. And, studies aside, Chilean standards allow higher levels of pollution than international standards (Barandiaran and Oyarzun, 2023; Chile Sustentable July 2022 report).

The harm suffered by the local population was not a surprise. Before the approval of the first smelter, nearby agricultural communities raised concerns about the impacts of emissions on their farms. In 1985, workers like Luis Eduardo Pino complained about suffering the effects of lead and arsenic poisoning.

The government of Gabriel Boric announced in June 2022 that the copper smelter would be closed: decommissioned.

One coal-fired power plant has also been decommissioned, but three more are still operating. Two (Nueva Ventanas and Campiche) announced plans to close in January 2025. One (Ventanas 2) missed its commitment to close by December 2022. The coalition “Chao Carbon” (goodbye coal) is working to ensure Chile closes all its coal plants by 2030 – the deadline set by the IPCC for wealthy countries.

Cleaning up Ventanas will take decades. What soil remediation techniques will be used? Will the massive and aged facilities be dismantled, and can this be done without releasing toxic dust? Will they be converted into new industrial sites, which may bring new rounds of harmful pollution? Keeping the state and the many companies operating at Ventanas accountable throughout clean-up process and rebuilding will be hard.

In the meantime, more than 100 residents of this area have given their testimony in what has been called “Chile’s biggest environmental court case ever,” in pursuit of recognition of the suffering they have lived at the hands of Chile’s largest industrial polluters. The Environmental Tribunal’s verdict is expected in 2023.

Wind and Solar Energy

The Atacama Desert, ancestral land of the Colla and Atacameño peoples, has extremely high levels of UV radiation. Meanwhile ancestral Kawesqar and Selk'nam lands far south experience strong and persistent winds.

Like wind energy, solar power is a renewable source of energy and it produces very little air or water pollution.

Solar panels capture energy from the sun by using photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity. The energy is then stored in batteries made with lithium.

Shown here is EIG Global Energy Partners' Cerro Dominador solar-thermal power plant while it was under construction in 2018. The plant will concentrate photovoltaic energy from the sun into a tank of molten salt that will function as a thermal battery.

The geographical placement of solar panels is based on a variety of factors including how much sun an area gets throughout the year. Northern Chile experiences persistent solar radiation and the desert environment is often free of cloud coverage. This makes the Atacama desert an optimal location for the development of solar power plants.

There are currently 58 solar power plants operating in Chile which produce a total of 6,130 MW.

An additional 24 plants are under construction
54 plants are in the early stages of planning
A majority of the solar plants in Chile are clustered in the northern region where the photovoltaic output is the highest in the country

Wind turbines like those seen here at Valle de los Vientos wind farm produce electricity by using the kinetic energy of the wind to turn a turbine, which is connected to a generator. The generator then converts the mechanical energy of the turbine into electrical energy, which can be used to power homes and businesses.

The Southeast Trade Winds are a prevailing wind pattern that blows from the east to the west across the tropical Atlantic Ocean.
The Westerly Winds are a prevailing wind pattern that blows from the west to the east across the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
Both of these wind patterns are used to generate electricity through wind turbines.

There are currently 48 wind farms operating in Chile with a cumulative capacity of approximately 3900 MW.

In addition, 11 wind farm projects are under construction
Another 22 are under development (pre-construction)
If all of these are completed Chile will be producing an additional 6,120 MW of electricity using renewable wind as fuel.

Five additional wind farm projects have been announced but not yet approved.
Four of these projects will harness the Westerly Winds that blow across the southernmost part of Chile.
H2 Magallanes stands out as the largest capacity wind farm project in all of Chile, with an anticipated capacity of 10,000 MW.

Click on a wind farm location to see its ownership and capacity attributes.

Chile stands out because it has a coal plant decommissioning policy and has begun implementing it. This is a crucial step towards eliminating use of fossil fuels, absolutely necessary for keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Several factors contribute to Chile's progress on this front, including strong and persistent public pressure, policy change that facilitated construction of renewables, and a favorable geography. Concern among many in Chile with climate change, water scarcity, destruction of ecosystems, and the consequences of pollution is high, and this translates into efforts to advance progressive climate actions at local, national and global scales. Fossil fuel decommissioning is advancing in Chile, but mining poses major challenges which still need to be addressed.