In the last decade, the climate crisis, visibly exacerbated by the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, has emerged as one of the preeminent challenges of the 21st century. The energy sector and the central role of hydrocarbons are crucial to understanding the roots of global warming from the Industrial Revolution to the present, accounting for two-thirds of associated greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, the deliberate pursuit of decarbonizing economies through an energy transition that involves the gradual reduction of hydrocarbon exploitation has become a top priority on the global agenda.

Indeed, the energy transition has become a structuring axis of the reorganization of global capitalism (Lazaro & Serrani, 2023). Driven by climate urgency, geopolitical competition between major powers, and the search for new accumulation trajectories derived from green industrial policy, it is often presented by the Global North as a necessary and technologically deterministic process (Van de Graaf et al., 2016; Kern & Markard, 2016).

Likewise, another facet of the energy transition explains that it ceased to be merely a climate agenda and became the focus of a geopolitical and techno-productive dispute between China and Western powers (Eckersley, 2020). Against the backdrop of the “green economy” promoted since Rio 1992, Rio+20, and the first green growth plans (Barbier, 2012; Loiseau et al., 2016), China has accelerated, since the late 2000s, an explicit strategy of industrial and technological leadership: a drastic reduction in the costs of renewable energy (Wei et al., 2019), the deployment of large-scale manufacturing capabilities, and the launch of Made in China 2025, which places the green economy (renewables, batteries, electromobility, energy efficiency, networks, and associated infrastructure) at the core of its manufacturing power strategy (Serrani, 2025). This progress is perceived in the United States, the European Union, and Japan as a threat of technological and industrial backwardness, reshaping the energy transition into a race to control critical links in the new value chains. The Western response takes the form of a new wave of green industrial policy, highly selective and increasingly protectionist. In the United States, the combination of the Infrastructure Bill, the CHIPS Act, and, above all, the Inflation Reduction Act provided (until its suspension by the Trump Administration in 2025) massive subsidies, tax credits, and direct incentives for production and demand (for example, in batteries and electric vehicles), conditioned on requirements for local content, regional integration, and the exclusion of Chinese suppliers (Mehdi & Moerenhout, 2023). Following the European Green Deal, the European Union launched the Green Deal Industrial Plan to anchor the manufacturing of zero-emission technologies (batteries, wind turbines, heat pumps, electrolyzers, etc.) within its own borders and secure access to critical raw materials. Meanwhile, Germany is redefining its relationship with China under the triad of "partner, competitor, and systemic rival," seeking to reduce dependence on key inputs and technologies. Taken together, these strategies demonstrate that the energy transition is being structured as a competition for commercial and technological leadership, where green industrial policy becomes the primary instrument for vying for control over who sets the rules, dominates the technologies, and captures the added value of the new decarbonized economy.

It is clear, then, that transitions are never neutral: they redistribute power, reconfigure patterns of specialization, and modify conditions of well-being and vulnerability. From a historical-structural perspective, Latin America faces this process from a radically different starting point, characterized by low historical climate responsibility, high socio-environmental vulnerability, fiscal scarcity to meet the substantial investments needed for climate change adaptation and mitigation, and limited technological capacities (Canafoglia, 2024; Chavez & Sweeney, 2020).

Latin America's unique characteristics are expressed, above all, in the configuration of its energy and electricity matrices (Lazaro & Serrani, 2023). First, the region combines relatively low coal use, a high share of hydroelectricity, and a growing, albeit uneven, incorporation of wind, solar, and bioenergy. This feature has reduced carbon intensities compared to other regions, but it has also generated new dependencies: water vulnerability in a context of climate change, territorial concentration of megaprojects, and distributive tensions surrounding the social impacts of energy projects (Werner, 2012). Added to this is the persistence of natural gas as a transitional energy source, and the heterogeneity between countries that are highly dependent on water and others with more thermally intensive energy structures.

Secondly, Latin American energy transitions are traversed by structural tensions linked to three analytical dimensions (IEA, 2021).

(a) Geopolitics and regional integration: Latin America is simultaneously a strategic supplier of critical minerals, a recipient of renewable energy investments, and a territory where standards and supply chains associated with hydrogen, batteries, and electrification are contested. These opportunities coexist with risks of green re-primarization, technological dependence, and regional fragmentation (Ugarteche et al., 2023; Puyana, 2020; Guerrero, 2024).

(b) Transition policies, public policies, and green industrial policy: States face budget constraints, regulatory weakness, and pressure to reconcile decarbonization with growth, employment, and macroeconomic stability. The lack of their own technological capabilities threatens to consolidate a new dependence on highly complex green sectors (Meyer, 2020).

(c) Energy poverty, decentralization, and democratization: deficits in access, quality, and affordability of energy persist. Without redistributive mechanisms, decentralized models, and social participation, the transition risks deepening territorial and socioeconomic inequalities (Guzowski, 2020; Cortes Oggero et al., 2022; Cordoba, 2025; Banegas Diaz & Cardozo, 2023).

This is why the energy transition in Latin America cannot be conceived as a simple technological substitution, but rather as a political process that redefines international integration, the productive structure, and social justice. Two imperatives emerge strongly: avoiding a subordinate integration into the new international division of labor, based on critical minerals, digitalization, and high value-added green manufacturing (Gudynas, 2011; Sabbatella, 2010), and ensuring that the transition effectively contributes to solving the region's structural problems: inequality, poverty, informal employment, and climate vulnerability (Hickel, 2020; Pichs, 2024).

In this sense, the Working Group's project for the period 2026–2028 aims to construct a situated and critical analysis of the Latin American energy transition that integrates, in an articulated manner, the three dimensions mentioned: geopolitics and regional integration, public policies and green industrialization, and energy justice linked to access, decentralization, and democratization. From a critical perspective regarding the normative visions of the Global North, the central objective will be to identify the material, institutional, and social conditions necessary for the energy transition to contribute to more autonomous, inclusive, and equitable development in Latin America.

The interplay between energy transition, international geopolitics, climate policy, green industrial policy, and socio-energy inequalities constitutes one of the central analytical issues in the contemporary transformation of capitalism (Geels, 2002; Van de Graaf, T., & Sovacool, 2020; Lazaro & Serrani, 2023). The energy transition is currently operating as a process that reorders global hierarchies, redefines supply chains, reorganizes climate finance flows, and reconfigures the technological frontier of the "green" economy.

In Latin America, these processes are embedded in historical trajectories marked by primary-sector-based production structures, technological dependence, climate vulnerability, and persistent social welfare deficits (Bertoni et al., 2009; Bertola & Ocampo, 2013). Within this macro context, it is possible to argue that the energy transition in Latin America and the Caribbean exhibits structural features that clearly differentiate it from the trajectories of developed countries.

On the one hand, the region can be considered a “climate creditor”: its historical contribution to global warming is significantly low, while developed countries bear the brunt of the responsibility for most excess emissions (Hickel, 2020). This creates a profound asymmetry between responsibilities and capacities, which should guide any discussion on mitigation efforts. At the same time, Latin America’s energy matrix has a relatively low dependence on fossil fuels, especially coal, and a significant share of low-emission sources (hydroelectricity), which puts the region in a more favorable position to accelerate decarbonization (Lazaro & Serrani, 2023; IEA, 2019). Furthermore, based on ECLAC data, this situation is complemented by sustained improvements in access to electricity, especially among lower-income households, demonstrating significant progress in terms of energy inclusion and institutional capacity to expand infrastructure (although the gap in access inequality, particularly between rural and urban areas, still needs to be closed).

However, these advantages coexist with structural tensions that condition the speed and direction of the transition. The region exhibits low per capita energy consumption, limited industrialization in strategic clean technology sectors, restricted public and private investment in renewables, and a strong dependence on income from natural resources, which limits the fiscal space to finance a profound transformation of the energy system (IEA, 2024; OECD, 2022; Stanley, 2021). Furthermore, the absence of robust industrial policies has hindered the development of local value chains linked to the transition and the consolidation of an integration pattern where Latin America risks once again becoming a supplier of minerals and primary energy for the industrial strategies of China, the United States, and the European Union (Ugarteche et al., 2023). Taken together, these elements constitute a transition marked by a paradox: the region has favorable initial conditions but faces structural obstacles (financial, technological, and productive) that could perpetuate its dependent position in the new "green" economy. if it does not redefine its development strategy in terms of value creation and socio-environmental justice.

Indeed, the theoretical relevance of the proposed topic arises precisely from the fact that the energy transition cannot be understood outside of these tensions: it is simultaneously an environmental challenge, a development problem, a field of geopolitical dispute and a vector that can reproduce or transform inequalities (Mideros Mora & Fernández Mora, 2021; Garcia & Fernandez, 2021).

The GT's proposal is based on the convergence of three theoretical debates that, in international literature, usually follow separate tracks.

(1) The geopolitics of the energy transition, which explores how competition for critical minerals, green technologies and global standards reorganizes power positions and opens new dependencies in the Global South.

(2) The political economy of development, which analyzes whether the transition can enable green industrialization strategies, value aggregation and technological autonomy, or whether, on the contrary, it consolidates a re-primarization under new environmental justifications.

(3) Critical studies of energy and inequality, which allow us to understand how transitions affect territories, social groups and households in a differentiated way, especially in contexts where energy poverty, urban-rural gaps and tariff asymmetries are structural.

The interaction between these three fields shapes an analytical approach that illuminates processes that other perspectives tend to obscure: the distributive tensions emerging from decarbonization, the struggle for rent-seeking in strategic green sectors, the limits of climate financialization, the need for industrial policies to support the transition, and the role of energy democratization in building social legitimacy. This articulation allows us to understand dynamics that only emerge when addressed together: how technological transformations intertwine with historical inequalities, how climate policies influence productive specialization, and how geopolitics shapes energy justice. At this analytical intersection, it becomes possible to identify patterns, contradictions, and opportunities that remain opaque from isolated disciplinary perspectives.

The rationale for the Working Group's new period also stems from the work accumulated during the 2019–2022 and 2023–2025 phases. In the first period, a critical analysis of the link between energy, development, and inequality was consolidated, addressing security of supply, state-owned enterprises, socio-environmental impacts, regional integration, and dependency. In the second period, the Working Group deepened the energy transition agenda, introducing discussions on just transition, decarbonization, financing, industrial capacity, and, especially, energy poverty and the democratization of access. The combination of both phases allowed for the construction of a conceptual and empirical body of work that demonstrates that the energy transition can only be understood by simultaneously articulating its geopolitical, productive, and social dimensions.

The 2026–2028 period proposes taking a further step: developing an integrated analytical framework that allows us to understand the energy transition as a multidimensional process where global power struggles, development strategies, and demands for social justice converge. This approach, situated in Latin America and the Caribbean and attentive to its structural tensions, provides tools for envisioning transitions that do not reproduce subordination, but rather enable endogenous capacities, regional integration, and democratization of access to energy.