South American reform lessons: twenty years of restructuring and reform in Argentina, Brazil and Chile

Abstract

South America is facing important challenges in electricity supply to allow for future economic development. Current electricity market designs are being reviewed to avoid supply difficulties and couple the existing outlook of primary energy resources and the investment interest by the private sector. While Brazil and Chile progress into a second stage of reforms with public power purchase agreement (PPA) auctions in a private environment, Argentina makes a backward movement to significant state intervention, as in the times previous to reform. This paper discusses the approaches to be used by each country to ensure sufficient capacity and investment to reliably serve their growing economies.