page_title: Economy of Argentina
section_title: Energy
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of Argentina / Sectors / Energy
caption_attribution_description: Español: destileria
context_page_description: Argentina is a developing country. It is the second-largest in South America behind Brazil.
  Argentina benefits from rich natural resources, a highly literate population, an export-oriented agricultural sector, and a diversified industrial base. Argentina's economic performance has historically been very uneven, with high economic growth alternating with severe recessions, particularly since the late twentieth century, since when income maldistribution and poverty have increased. Early in the twentieth century Argentina had one of the ten highest per capita GDP levels in the world, on par with Canada and Australia and surpassing both France and Italy.
  Argentina's currency declined by about 50% in 2018 to more than 38 Argentine pesos per U.S. Dollar and as of in that year is under a stand-by program from the International Monetary Fund. In 2019, it fell further by 25%.
  Argentina is considered an emerging market by the FTSE Global Equity Index, and is one of the G-20 major economies.
context_section_description: Electricity generation in Argentina totaled 133.3 billion Kwh in 2013. The electricity sector in Argentina constitutes the third largest power market in Latin America. It mainly still relies on centralised generation by natural gas power generation (51%), hydroelectricity (28%), and oil-fired generation (12%). Reserves of shale gas and tight oil in the Vaca Muerta oil field and elsewhere are estimated to be the world's third-largest.
  Despite the country's large untapped wind and solar potential new renewable energy technologies and distributed energy generation are barely exploited. Wind energy is the fastest growing among new renewable sources. Fifteen wind farms have been developed since 1994 in Argentina, the only country in the region to produce wind turbines. The 55 MW of installed capacity in these in 2010 will increase by 895 MW upon the completion of new wind farms begun that year. Solar power is being promoted with the goal of expanding installed solar capacity from 6 MW to 300, and total renewable energy capacity from 625 MW to 3,000 MW.
  Argentina is in the process of commissioning large centralised energy generation and transmission projects. An important number of these projects are being financed by the government through trust funds, while independent private initiative is limited as it has not fully recovered yet from the effects of the Argentine economic crisis.
  The first of the three nuclear reactors was inaugurated in 1974, and in 2015 nuclear power generated 5% of the country's energy output.
  The electricity sector was unbundled in generation, transmission and distribution by the reforms carried out in the early 1990s. Generation occurs in a competitive and mostly liberalized market, in which 75% of the generation capacity is owned by private utilities. In contrast, the transmission and distribution sectors are highly regulated and much less competitive than generation.
caption: A YPF refinery.
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