The International Political Economy of rents in the renewable energy sector: assessing the potential for green industrial policies in Latin America

The post-Covid economic recovery plan of the UN'sEconomic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean(ECLAC) aims to establish a sustainable model ofdevelopment which, based on the decoupling of economicgrowth and carbon emissions through renewable energydeployment, would transform the economic structure of theregion. Informed by the structuralist tradition, ECLACdefends the development of domestic productivecapabilities through industrial policies as key to preventenvironmental sustainability strategies from reinforcing thegap between Latin America and the global North.
ECLAC's vision, however, largely disregards economicsrents in this economic transformation, which it mainlyconceives as a transition to higher value-added activitiesand technological increases in productivity. This appears asa serious blind sport given both the land dispossessionsassociated with renewable energy deployment in LatinAmerica, which have been interpreted as a continuation ofthe region's extractivist model of rent-based development,and the importance that both mainstream and heterodoxliterature on industrial policy bestow on the complexrelationship between development and economic rents.In this context, this project will explore how rent relationsin the renewable energy sector affect the ability of LatinAmerican governments to use green industrial policies topursue a sustainable model of development, using Mexicoand Brazil as case studies