Whenever a geopolitical tension threatens fuel supplies, energy returns to the center of strategic debate. It happened during the 1973 oil crisis and again after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with natural gas. Today, disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz serve as a reminder of the extent to which energy remains, at its highest level, a matter of national security and, at a minimum, one of political survival—Bolivia alone provides a sufficient example.
From oil to electricity
For decades, energy supply was dominated by petrostates. The power of Saudi Arabia, Russia, or Iran rested on scarce, geographically concentrated fossil resources. Whoever controlled oil wells, pipelines, or maritime chokepoints controlled a significant portion of the global economy. The rules of the game are changing: Saudi Arabia is investing in renewables through Vision 2030, while Russia exports nuclear technology. The world’s leading fossil-fuel producers are seeking to preserve their influence in a world where energy power no longer depends solely on oil.
Alfredo García, an expert and consultant for the International Atomic Energy Agency, argues that “fossil fuels brought us to the highest levels of human development.” Oil will not disappear tomorrow: beyond fuels, it remains an essential raw material for agriculture, the chemical industry, and pharmaceutical production. What is changing is its relative weight within an increasingly diversified energy mix, as the strategic focus shifts from controlling the fuel itself to the ability to generate, store, manage, and distribute electricity.
Luciano Silva, a specialist in energy storage for Latin America, offers a perspective that reframes the discussion: the real transformation consists of moving “from a reality in which energy was scarce to one in which non-conventional renewable energy—solar and wind—is abundant. What is scarce today is the management of that variable renewable energy.”
This observation is particularly relevant for Latin America. In Europe, the challenge is to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon energy sources. According to Silva, many countries never had abundant domestic fossil-fuel reserves to begin with. For them, this is not a transition but an opportunity to build energy autonomy based on resources such as sunlight, wind, and water. To achieve this, large-scale batteries are the key technology that must be developed.
One dependency replaced by another
If the twentieth century depended on Middle Eastern oil, the twenty-first century increasingly depends on smart grids, semiconductors, energy storage, and strategic minerals. Here lies a paradox: in the new energy era, dependency may not be disappearing but merely being replaced by a different one. Most of the lithium extracted from the triangle formed by Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia is refined in Asia. China not only dominates the production of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles; for years it has controlled the entire lithium iron phosphate (LFP) value chain—the current standard in electric mobility and industrial storage—through state-subsidized innovation and development, long-term planning, and economies of scale that are difficult to replicate, although Chinese firms have recently begun investing in the diversification of their production.
While Latin America seeks to integrate itself into this value chain, China is already moving toward sodium-ion batteries, a technology based on a widely available material that frees it from dependence on lithium imports.
New energy actors
The geopolitical struggle over energy is no longer taking place solely among states. Large technology companies are beginning to behave as energy actors. The expansion of artificial intelligence is driving a surge in electricity demand. Amazon, Google, and other hyperscalers are seeking long-term power supply agreements, financing energy infrastructure, and investing in small modular nuclear reactors.
Microsoft signed a historic twenty-year agreement to purchase the entire output of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Electricity is becoming a strategic input as important as oil once was for the industrial economy, and nuclear energy is experiencing a renewed wave of global interest.
Chronos and kairos
The new geopolitics of energy is not limited to access to electricity or competing technological choices; it also manifests itself in differing capacities to plan for the future. This is what I call “political dumping”: the difficulty of sustaining long-term strategic investments in systems where political costs are immediate but benefits will be reaped by future governments.
Ancient Greece distinguished between Chronos, chronological time, and Kairos, the opportune moment for action. Nuclear reactors, power grids, and energy storage systems require finding the right political opening in order to be planned and implemented. Electoral calendars, by contrast, operate under very short-term incentives that often result in patchwork solutions and little long-term vision.
China has resolved this tension through long-term state planning—at the cost of a one-party system that suppresses dissent. Some democracies have also succeeded. Finland is building Onkalo, a nuclear waste repository designed to last 100,000 years: no politician will live to see its completion (and perhaps no other type of human being will either). In France, the nuclear program has endured as a state policy. South Korea has made energy and technology pillars of an industrial strategy sustained over decades.
The key to energy security lies in the existence of political and institutional agreements capable of surviving the pressures of the short term.
The Latin American opportunity
Latin America possesses some of the world’s largest reserves of lithium, copper, and uranium, in addition to abundant hydroelectric, solar, and wind resources. Yet the region remains a recurring victim of the well-known “paradox of plenty” or “resource curse,” whereby countries rich in raw materials fail to translate their wealth into sustained development.
Escaping this self-reinforcing cycle requires more than simply extracting what lies beneath the ground. The plot twist needed to overcome the paradox of abundance in the energy sector involves strengthening the segments with the highest added value—from mineral processing and energy storage to nuclear technology, smart grids, and energy software. This must be complemented by the development of human capital and homegrown innovation capabilities sustained over time.
Today, institutional stability has become as strategic as lithium, copper, or natural gas. While some countries are turning energy into industrial policy, technological innovation, and geopolitical influence, Latin America risks once again occupying the role it knows best: that of a supplier of inputs that others will transform into power.
Autor
BA in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), specialization in International Relations, diploma from the INCAP School of Government. Analyst at the Institute for International Security and Strategic Affairs (ISIAE/CARI).
