Argentina’s Ministry of Economy has signed an agreement with ten northern provinces – also known as Región Norte Grande – to deploy 2.5GW of renewables.
In order to deploy the 2.5GW of renewable energy, projects will use solar PV, small hydro, biogas and biomass across the provinces of Tucumán, Salta, Santiago del Estero, Jujuy, Catamarca, La Rioja, Misiones, Chaco, Corrientes and Formosa.
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The Ministry of Energy requested the country’s power market administrator, CAMMESA, to enter into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the 10 provinces of Norte Grande to financially secure the development of the projects.
| Province | Capacity allocated | Share of all capacity |
| Tucumán | 370MW | 14.86% |
| Chaco | 350MW | 14.12% |
| Corrientes | 345MW | 13.93% |
| Misiones | 330MW | 13.18% |
| Salta | 255MW | 10.31% |
| Santiago del Estero | 210MW | 8.43% |
| La Rioja | 180MW | 7.31% |
| Formosa | 160MW | 6.43% |
| Catamarca | 155MW | 6.18% |
| Jujuy | 145MW | 5.25% |
These renewable projects are expected to create 10,000 jobs across the region, while increasing the share of renewables by 5% in Argentina’s electricity generation, according to the governor of Salta.
“Today the governors are taking a giant step, perhaps it is not dimensioned because what you see here is the signing of a paper, but what the northern provinces’ governors are doing is promoting the national electrical system through PPAs with CAMMESA, in an agreement with the Ministry of Energy, for the transformation of renewables into power for the national electrical system and for the whole north of Argentina,” said Sergio Massa, Minister of Economy.
After several years at a standstill where renewables were barely deployed, more so in the case of solar PV, Argentina has been increasing its interest in deploying renewable energy as shown by the latest auction – dubbed “RenMDI” – which ended up being oversubscribed and awarded 500MW to solar PV alone.
Earlier this year, state-owned YPF Luz commissioned the first phase of a 300MW solar PV project in the western province of San Juan,
Despite being one of the biggest countries in Latin America, after Brazil, deployment of solar PV is still far behind neighbouring countries, with around 1.1GW of solar PV installed by the end of 2022, according to data from energy think tank Ember.