The evidence from recent years leaves no doubt: anthropogenic climate change is accelerating, with its impacts becoming increasingly severe, frequent, and hazardous. These include extreme weather events, rising global temperatures, sea level rise, biodiversity loss, threats to agricultural productivity and food security, health risks, water scarcity, and escalating economic losses. These interconnected challenges are not only harming ecosystems but also undermining societal stability and economic resilience. According to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), without substantial and immediate mitigation efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, these impacts will intensify, potentially reaching irreversible tipping points. The need for urgent global action to limit warming levels has never been more critical (IPCC 2022; 2023). August 2024 represents the fourteenth consecutive month in which global temperatures exceeded the pre-industrial baseline’s monthly average (1850–1900) by at least 1.5 °C, reinforcing the warming trend’s persistence (Rohde 2024).

The energy transition is pivotal for decarbonising the global economy and addressing the pressing challenges of climate change. Recent progress in renewable energy deployment has been encouraging. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2024c), wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies are jointly projected to exceed hydropower in electricity generation by 2024. Furthermore, overall renewables are projected to surpass coal power generation by 2025, marking a pivotal shift in the global energy landscape. Notwithstanding these encouraging indications, ensuring the continuity and acceleration of the energy transition is imperative to safeguard a sustainable future. Continued efforts must be made to enhance the deployment of renewable technologies in order to reduce carbon emissions and ensure the establishment of reliable and resilient energy systems on a global scale.

However, the concept of energy transition is not limited to adopting renewable energy sources. Rather, it encompasses a multifaceted transformation involving cultural, societal, institutional, political, and technological shifts (Poque González 2020). In examining the technologies that drive this transition, which are termed ‘low-carbon technologies’, countries typically assume one or more distinct roles. These include supplying and processing essential inputs for production chains (critical minerals), manufacturing these technologies, or implementing them domestically. Certain nations, like the People’s Republic of China, operate across these roles simultaneously, engaging in the extraction of critical minerals, manufacturing low-carbon technologies, and their domestic deployment (IEA 2022).

The Latin American role

The adoption of low-carbon technologies across Latin America is indicative of significant regional heterogeneity. Notable progress has been made by countries such as Uruguay, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Chile in integrating renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind power. In 2022, these technologies made a notable contribution to the power energy mix in these nations, with solar and wind accounting for 5.7% and 30.8%, respectively, in Uruguay and 0.16% and 11.34% in Costa Rica. In Brazil, the contribution of these technologies to the power energy mix was 11.85% and 11.51%, respectively, while in Chile, it was 23.97% and 12.98% (Castillo et al. 2023). In stark contrast, a significant proportion of Caribbean nations continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels as a source of energy. As of 2022, fossil fuel-based technologies constituted approximately 80% of the region’s power generation mix when considering all Caribbean countries collectively (OLADE 2023).

The Seventh Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 7) of the United Nations (UN) aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. Nevertheless, attaining this objective presents considerable challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean, where notable social inequalities persist. Despite substantial improvements in electricity coverage—reaching 97.54% of the population by 2022 (Castillo et al. 2023)—access to clean and modern fuels and technologies remains unevenly distributed across socioeconomic and geographic sectors. Notably, energy poverty remains pronounced: the poorest quintile of the population has nine times less access to electricity than the wealthiest quintile, highlighting a persistent gap that disproportionately affects rural and marginalised communities (United Nations 2023).

In addition to structural inequalities, recent global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, have led to sharp increases in energy costs, exacerbating inflation throughout the region. This inflation has further burdened low-income households, with many struggling to afford energy services (United Nations 2023). In Brazil, the financial burden of energy costs is borne disproportionately by low-income........

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