How did Uruguay cut carbon emissions? The answer is blowing in the wind : Planet Money

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/06/ [login to see] /uruguay-green-energy-carbon-emissions-climate-change
Back in 2007, Uruguay had a massive problem with no obvious fix. The economy of this country of 3.5 million people was growing, but there wasn't enough energy to power all that growth. There was energy rationing, and people's power bills kept going up.

"It was difficult for us to cope," Ramón Méndez Galain remembers. "It was difficult to get electricity. For some time, we were beginning to have blackouts."

Méndez Galain had trained as a particle physicist. "When you are trained as a scientist," he says, "you are trained to see an unsolved problem, and [to try] to find an explanation and a solution. So I used, if you wish, my scientific skills I had developed in order to face this difficulty with the same strategy."