How these 3 countries built renewable energy fast

slip fossil fuels and ramping up renewable vitality may seem the likes of a slow and difficult transition in Canada, but there are countries around the world providing examples of how it can be done — and of the benefits. Here's how Uruguay, Kenya and Pakistan built up their clean electricity capacity.

Oil, coal and gas still make up more than four-fifths of the world's energy supply.

But many countries have been pushing to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change and vulnerable to supply and price shocks due to global events such as the war with Iran.

Jessica Isaacs, global impact director of the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Polsky Energy Center,  says this is happening in countries in many different parts of the world.

"In a lot of cases, the motive is energy security," she said, adding that fossil fuels leave countries' economies vulnerable to something beyond their control.

On the other hand, renewable energy is "locally grown. Every country around the world has solar and wind in some degree. Most countries have some other resource like geothermal or hydropower … that can really insulate countries from those supply shocks."

We've already heard a lot about the journeys of some European countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. But here are some examples from other parts of the world you may have heard less about.

What the Netherlands can teach Canada about solar power

Uruguay, which relied on imported fossil fuels for electricity until the 2000s, was motivated by some of those price and supply shocks, as the price of oil tripled between 2001 and 2008 and its energy demand grew. 

Ramón Méndez Galain, a physicist who became the South American country's energy minister, came up with a plan to transition its grid to renewables and sell the idea to the skeptical public.

"I told people this was the best option even if they don’t believe climate change exists," Galain told the Guardian in 2023. "It’s the cheapest and not dependent on crazy fluctuations [in oil prices].”

Uruguay already had hydropower, but it installed dozens of wind farms, which generated nearly 40 per cent of its electricity in 2023, and invested in biomass and solar. 

"Today, Uruguay is 90 to 99 per cent renewable electricity. And that's coming from a mix of different resources, solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, geothermal," Isaacs said. "Uruguay has shown what a rapid transition you can make if energy security is the goal that you have in mind."

In some countries, the transition isn't so much of a transition as a buildup of renewables. In 1995, only five per cent of Kenyans had electricity. Now, 76 per cent of them do, and the International Energy Agency says it's on track for its goal of universal access by 2030.

Kenya's goal is to reach 100 per cent renewable power that year and fuel the green industries of the future by 2040.

By 2024, it had already hit close to 90 per cent renewables, nearly half of that geothermal, along with hydro, wind and solar.

Isaacs says Kenya and neighbouring Ethiopia, which has leaned into hydro power, "are showing that clean, firm power can underpin economic growth for developing economies."

Much of that is grid energy, complemented by distributed resources such as rooftop solar to reach consumers who aren't connected to the grid.

Pakistan first started offering incentives for solar in 2015, when it was a "negligible" part of the country's energy mix, the WRI reports. But it took a decade and some other motivators to create what the WRI called "one of the most rapid and unanticipated transitions to clean energy."

In 2022, natural gas prices were spiking due to the war in Ukraine, electricity prices were spiking due to global fuel prices, and the government cut subsidies for both electricity and diesel, and solar panel prices were falling quickly. 

The result? The share of electricity generated by solar jumped five-fold between December 2021 and December 2025, the Guardian reported, based on data from the energy think-tank Ember.

The WRI estimates that 20 per cent of Pakistan's electricity will come from solar this year – most of it small systems installed on rooftops of homes and businesses.

Distributed solar has "totally buffered Pakistan's power sector from the impacts of natural gas supply disruptions," Isaacs said. "some initial analysis has shown that it has avoided about $12 billion in costs for oil and gas imports since the start of the Iran War."

She thinks even in higher-income coutries like the U.S. And Canada, rooftop solar can "really help individual consumers to weather shocks in our electricity bills" as pressures such as electricity demand from data centres threaten to push up power prices.

Isaacs said what has made many of these countries successful is their ability to convince their populations of benefits of renewable energy for the climate, reliability and the economy. "They've had the political will to pursue it. They've brought people along on this journey."

What if we put solar panels on every roof in the world?

Add some “good” to your morning and evening.

The environment is changing. This newsletter is your weekly guide to what we’re doing about it.

---

---