A newspaper report The country de España analyzes the Latin American economies in relation to the energy transition that is already taking place (and increasingly faster). In this context, the media says that economies based on oil and gas have everything to lose with the transfer of fossil fuels to the background.
On the contrary, copper, lithium and cobalt exporters will benefit from the new global energy matrix.
In the list of the first are Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela, in the second, Chile and Peru.
“The decarbonisation required to cope with climate change, which will cause an earthquake of great proportions on the growth matrix of practically all Latin American countries,” says El País. “In not so many years, hydrocarbons will lose value in favor of minerals essential for the development of renewables,” he adds.
Although he assures that oil still has “Years of dominance in the global energy mix”, lithium and other minerals will begin to have an increasing presence in the equation of Latin American economies.
Similarly, regarding oil, he says (not without irony) that “We are facing the last waltz of crude oil.”
Citing Karen Smith Stegen, Professor of International Relations at the Jacobs University in Bremen who specializes in the shift towards sustainable energy, El País says that exporting economies that have not prepared for the era of renewable energy, such as Mexico’s, “They will lose out”.
“As the hydrocarbon market shrinks, they will enter a phase of economic decline,” says the specialist.
In America, except for very oil economies but with very powerful sources of growth beyond crude oil, such as the United States and Canada, others, such as Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico, will suffer. “Like Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador,” he points out.
Something similar happens with natural gas, where the big losers will be Venezuela (by far) and then Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago.
The winners: countries rich in copper and other metals that play relevant roles in the development of renewable energy. Peru is the second largest producer of copper and the origin of just over a tenth of that mineral that is consumed in the world. And Chile, the first global producer that contributes one in four tons of copper.
In that sense, although far away, Mexico can have benefits.
Producers of cobalt (used for green technologies), zinc (key to photovoltaic energy), lithium, nickel, graphite and manganese (the core of batteries) will also benefit.
In the case of solar energy, Chile, Argentina and Bolivia have high potential. “In Mexico, the benefit comes from the high average level in a majority of the territory. In all of them, a potential that would require public-private investment in appropriate infrastructure remains to be explored ”, says the report.