What good is renewable energy if we can’t store it?

Source: Own analysis based on data from the Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional (as of May 28, 2025) and statements by the Ministry of Finance.

In 2024, Chile’s battery energy storage systems (BESS) injected 524.9 GWh of clean energy into the grid — a 25x increase compared to the year before.

Yet, in the same year, over 6,440 GWh of renewable energy were curtailed.

That means:

BESS absorbed only ~8% of the energy that was otherwise wasted.

This imbalance is striking. Despite the surge in operational BESS projects, Chile still lacks the storage infrastructure to meaningfully reduce curtailment — and with it, fossil fuel dependence. Every GWh curtailed is a GWh not used to replace fossil fuel, not monetized through carbon credits, and not counted toward national climate targets.

The role of BESS is clear: shift renewable energy to the hours where it’s needed most — nighttime — and displace thermal generation. But current deployment isn’t keeping pace with the scale of the challenge.

In late May, the Ministry of Finance announced a pro-investment fast-track proposal to accelerate projects aligned with decarbonization goals. Among other features, it includes:

• Centralized environmental evaluations,

• Regulatory “invariability” to prevent rule changes mid-process, and

• Parallel processing of key permits to reduce total approval times.

This is a welcome step. But it raises a key question:

Will it be enough — and fast enough — to close the storage gap and allow Chile to meet its 2030 NDC goals?

After all, much of Chile’s emissions reduction in the power sector is expected to come from retiring coal plants. That’s only feasible if the system can absorb and shift renewables with the help of large-scale storage — and that requires not just technical readiness, but regulatory agility and investment certainty.

At Sherpas, we’re working to unlock additional levers — particularly through bilateral carbon crediting mechanisms — that can complement this new policy framework and accelerate real deployment.

But the challenge remains:

Chile’s energy transition is not defined by ambition — it will be defined by execution.