Chile’s Energy Future: What the Government Is Planning for the Next 30 Years

Chile’s Ministry of Energy released the preliminary report of its Long-Term Energy Plan for 2028–2032 on 24 July 2026. It projects how much energy the country will use through 2057, where that energy will come from, and most importantly for anyone with operations here, where the grid needs to be built.

If you run a mine, a plant, a data centre, or a generation project in Chile, this document tells you where power will be available and where it won’t. This is our summary of the parts that matter commercially.

Where Chile’s power system stands today

Over the past decade Chile built renewables faster than almost any country its size. Solar farms filled the northern desert, wind farms went up in the centre and south, and coal plants began closing on a schedule set by the government.

The problem was never generation. It was transmissions. Chile is 4,300 kilometres long, and the places with the best sun and wind are not the places that consume the most power. Solar built in the north routinely has nowhere to go. In 2025, the province of Antofagasta alone wasted more than 1.3 TWh of renewable generation, power that was produced and then thrown away because the grid couldn’t move it. That was the highest figure in the country.

That mismatch is the problem this plan is designed to solve.

What the plan is, and what it is not

The Long-Term Energy Plan, PELP, in Chilean shorthand, is produced every five years by the Ministry of Energy and looks 30 years ahead. It is required by law.

One clarification worth making early, because it is easy to misread: the plan does not authorise or fund anything. It builds scenarios. Those scenarios then feed into the National Energy Commission’s annual transmission expansion planning, and that process is what produces binding works. The plan tells you where the government expects the grid to need reinforcement. It does not commit anyone to building it.

That still makes it valuable. It is the clearest public signal available about where connection capacity will exist in ten years.

The five scenarios

The Ministry models five futures. Three simply explore what might happen under different economic and cost conditions. Two test what additional policy could achieve.

The distinction is straightforward. The three exploratory scenarios ask what happens if the government does nothing new. The two mitigated scenarios ask what changes if it does.

What the projections say

Energy demand grows in every scenario — Energy demand increases in every scenario, ranging from 4.1% to 47.8% over the period. This wide range highlights how uncertain the outlook is. The highest growth comes from strong economic expansion, while the lowest growth comes from a weaker economy combined with major improvements in energy efficiency.

Transport remains Chile’s largest energy consumer, as it is today, followed by industry. Fossil fuels stay the country’s dominant energy source in every single scenario, with electricity second, biofuels third, and hydrogen a minor player that only appears in the 2040s.

For mining, the finding is significant. In the higher-growth scenarios, mining overtakes the residential sector to become Chile’s third-largest energy consumer. Copper drives almost all of that growth. And by 2055 under the more aggressive mitigated scenario, electricity becomes mining’s single largest energy source, displacing diesel and gas. Under the moderate mitigated scenario, the two converge at similar levels.

Regionally, Santiago concentrates the most demand in every scenario, followed by Antofagasta, because of mining, and Biobío, which combines heavy industry with a large population.

Data centres appear for the first time. They are now modelled as their own sector, adding meaningful new load concentrated in the north. Lithium also enters as a distinct sector for the first time, reflecting the national critical minerals strategy.

On emissions, measured against 2022:

Note the third row. The favourable scenario is the only one where emissions rise, because strong growth without additional policy simply means more consumption. Energy intensity falls by roughly a third by 2050 in both mitigated scenarios, though the report flags the 2030 milestone as difficult to reach.

What changed since the last plan

The most useful thing about this edition is how much more conservative it is than the previous one. Several assumptions were quietly walked back to match what actually happened.

Coal plants scheduled to close in 2025 and 2026 have not closed. The report now assumes 2030 for those units. Electric vehicle adoption forecasts were reduced against observed sales data, the long-term target held, but the path to it was stretched. Green hydrogen was downgraded to the conservative case in the national strategy rather than the headline target, specifically to avoid overstating its role.

For mining, one change matters directly. The previous plan assumed haul trucks would transition to renewable diesel blending. That has been dropped and replaced with a pathway based on electrification combined with hydrogen. If you operate a truck fleet, the government’s working assumption about your future equipment has changed.

The modelling itself also improved substantially. The transmission network representation went from 26 nodes to 234, aligned with the system operator’s own model. The transmission findings below are considerably better grounded than in the previous cycle.

Transmission: where the grid actually gets built

This is the most commercially useful part of the report.

Chile’s problem is geography. The best wind is in the south, the best sun in the northern desert, but the mines that consume the most power sit in the north, and Santiago sits in the middle. Electricity has to travel a very long way, and the wires are what limit it.

Think of the grid as a road network. The 500 kV lines are the motorways, moving large volumes over long distances. The 220 kV lines are the main roads distributing power regionally. Both need work.

The report calls for expanding the 500 kV route running north from Charrúa in Biobío, through Ancoa in Maule and Alto Jahuel, to Lo Aguirre on the western edge of Santiago. It needs at least 1,750 MVA of added capacity, a substantial increase for this route. The job it does is simple: let southern wind reach Santiago, then continue north to the mining regions via the existing Kimal–Lo Aguirre link. Without it, southern wind farms produce power that cannot reach the customers who need it.

Separately, some 220 kV lines need up to six times their current capacity, six times, not six per cent. These cluster in two regions, Antofagasta in the north and Maule in the centre-south, with specific stretches named, including Alto Jahuel–Buin and Encuentro–Kimal.

These works appear in all five scenarios. Fast growth or slow, cheap fuel or expensive, new climate policy or none, the same lines need reinforcing every time. Most findings in a 30-year plan hinge on assumptions; these do not. If you want to know where connection capacity will realistically exist in ten years, this is the strongest signal the document offers.

Nearer term, the plan adds roughly 1,700 MW of wind in Maule and 2,200 MW of solar, with the largest solar blocks in Antofagasta and Valparaíso.

The storage the model selects is eight-hour duration, not the four-hour batteries that dominate Chile’s current pipeline. The system needs to shift solar across a much longer window than most current projects are designed for.

Gas generation persists for the entire 30-year horizon. This is not because the system needs the electricity it produces, but because it still relies on gas plants to provide inertia, operating reserves, and other stability services.

As a result, the model keeps gas plants running even when their energy is not essential. In effect, they continue burning fuel primarily to support grid stability rather than to meet electricity demand.

The report notes that batteries could eventually perform this role. In grid-forming mode, batteries can detect frequency changes and respond within milliseconds. However, the scenarios do not assume that this capability will be deployed at scale. That assumption is the main reason gas generation remains in the results for the entire modelling horizon.

Curtailment – renewable power produced and discarded — settles at 9% to 12% over the long term, against roughly 7% today. The report treats this as acceptable, and at system level it is: solar and wind end up supplying more than 83% of annual generation, and building enough transmission to capture every last megawatt-hour would cost more than the energy is worth. Some spilling is the efficient outcome, not a failure. But for generators it is a real revenue risk that does not go away.

Offshore wind is analysed for the first time, but only materialises in three of the five scenarios, and no earlier than 2041.

Why this report is important

Mining – Mining is expected to become Chile’s third-largest energy consumer, driven mainly by copper. Antofagasta is also one of the regions where the grid is most constrained, with some 220 kV lines needing up to six times their current capacity. For new or expanding mines, grid access is therefore a real project risk, not a routine approval step. The government has also moved away from renewable diesel for haul fleets and now assumes greater use of electrification and hydrogen. That will influence the infrastructure built around mining sites and future regulatory expectations.

Generation – The national curtailment estimate of 9%–12% says little about the risk faced by an individual project. Antofagasta province alone curtailed more than 1.3 TWh in 2025. The key issue is the specific grid node where a project connects. Connection-point analysis should therefore be treated as a core due-diligence item, not a minor engineering detail. Offshore wind also remains a long-term option. It appears in only three of the five scenarios and not before 2041, which suggests the government is not yet planning around it.

Storage – The model favours eight-hour storage, rather than the four-hour batteries that dominate Chile’s current pipeline. It also keeps gas plants operating for 30 years to provide grid stability. Together, these findings suggest that the assets being built for today’s market may not be the assets the system ultimately needs.

Data centres – The report includes data centres for the first time and places them mainly in northern Chile, where solar power is cheapest. However, the north is also where transmission constraints are most severe. Siting decisions need to consider both power cost and grid availability.

Large electricity users – The report projects a wide seasonal spread in wholesale prices: close to zero during high-solar months, but around USD 60/MWh in daytime hours during lower-irradiance months after coal retires. That matters for contract design, procurement strategy, and the value of flexible demand. For businesses exposed to these issues, this report is worth reading closely. It is the clearest public signal of where Chile expects its power system to go—and where the biggest gaps are likely to remain.

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