Uruguay | Good News For Humankind

Wind turbines on green Uruguayan hillside for an article about Uruguay renewable electricity

Uruguay now runs on nearly 100% renewable electricity

By Peter Schulte / November 28, 2025 / Good News For Humankind

Uruguay renewable electricity now powers 97–99% of the country’s grid — one of the highest shares on Earth — and has done so reliably for years. Driven not by climate idealism but by a practical decision to escape costly fossil fuel imports, Uruguay transformed its entire energy system in roughly a decade using only proven technologies like wind, hydro, solar, and biomass. The result has been stabilized energy prices, thousands of new jobs, and a grid resilient enough to catch the attention of the IEA and World Bank. For developing nations still dependent on imported fuels, Uruguay’s model offers a concrete, replicable blueprint.

Uruguayan flag, for article on Uruguay renewable electricity

Uruguay now generates more than 90% of its electricity from renewables

By / December 27, 2023 / Good News For Humankind

Uruguay now generates between 90% and 98% of its electricity from renewables, a shift it pulled off in roughly 15 years after starting out almost entirely dependent on imported oil. The turning point came in 2008, when an oil price spike pushed the government to take a chance on a nuclear physicist with an unconventional pitch: skip the nuclear plant, go all in on wind. About 50 wind farms later, paired with existing hydropower, the country had one of the cleanest grids on Earth — and around 50,000 new jobs in a nation of just 3.4 million. Uruguay’s quiet experiment offers something the global energy transition badly needs: proof that a small country, starting from scratch, can actually do this.

image for article on UNASUR Constitutive Treaty

All 12 South American nations sign the UNASUR Constitutive Treaty

By Peter Schulte / May 23, 2008 / Archive of Human Genius

UNASUR was born on May 23, 2008, when all 12 South American nations gathered in Brasília to sign a single treaty binding a continent of more than 400 million people into one union. For a region long defined by rivalry and isolation, it was a rare written promise that their futures would be shaped together.

Eduardo Galeano, for article on Memory of Fire trilogy

Eduardo Galeano completes the Memory of Fire trilogy

By Peter Schulte / July 1, 1986 / Archive of Human Genius

In 1986, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano completed Memory of Fire, a three-volume retelling of the Americas built from hundreds of short, sourced scenes. He wrote much of it in exile, after fleeing two military regimes. The trilogy gave voice to the conquered and dispossessed, reshaping how history could be told.

José Batlle y Ordóñez, for article on Uruguay social reforms

Uruguay’s José Batlle y Ordóñez launches sweeping social reforms

By Peter Schulte / January 1, 1905 / Archive of Human Genius

Uruguay’s social reforms in the early 1900s turned a small South American country into an unlikely pioneer of progressive governance. Under President José Batlle y Ordóñez, the nation established the eight-hour workday, separated church from state, and opened its national university to women. A quietly radical experiment, built on the eastern bank of the River Plate.

17th century map of the Río de la Plata basin, for article on founding of Montevideo

Spain seizes Montevideo from Portugal and founds a city on the Río de la Plata

By Peter Schulte / January 22, 1724 / Archive of Human Genius

Montevideo’s founding began on a January morning in 1724, when Spanish forces under Bruno Mauricio de Zabala expelled a Portuguese garrison from a fort overlooking the bay. A census that same year counted Galician and Canary Islander families, over 1,000 mostly Guaraní people, and enslaved Bantu Africans — a diverse, unequal beginning for what became Uruguay’s capital.

Painting of a Charrúa warrior, for article on Charrúa peoples

Charrúa peoples arrive in present-day Uruguay

By Peter Schulte / January 21, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

The Charrúa people arrived in what is now Uruguay around 2000 B.C.E., joining a land already shaped by hunter-gatherers for at least 10,000 years. They lived as nomadic bands across the Río de la Plata grasslands, sustaining a population that likely never topped 20,000 without farming or cities — a quiet testament to deep ecological knowledge.