In late 2025, Mexico’s state electricity company announced the latest expansion of the Puerto Peñasco solar complex in Sonora. One of Latin America’s largest solar plants, it is set to deliver 1,000 megawatts of electricity by 2028. President Claudia Sheinbaum calls it a milestone for Mexico’s energy sovereignty. 

But 27 kilometres from that plant, the Tohono O'odham Indigenous people were telling a different story: the transmission lines desecrate sacred land. “It is as if I built a wall in the middle of a Catholic or Christian church,” said Matías Valenzuela, spokesperson for the community’s Supreme Council of Elders. The electricity produced will be sent to Baja California, 175 kilometres away. Their community was never consulted.

At the centre of a global energy transition reshaping how energy is produced, distributed and consumed, sits Latin America. The region generates over 65% of its electricity from renewable sources, well above the 40% global average, and supplies many of the minerals the global transition depends on, such as lithium from Argentina and copper from Peru. 

The same project can be presented as climate progress by a government and as dispossession by the community whose land it occupies. This complexity is not incidental; it is the story. And journalists navigating these competing narratives require a reporting framework that most coverage in the region currently lacks. This project aims to provide one. 

It is based on 21 in-depth interviews conducted between early and mid-2026 with freelance and staff journalists from print, digital and broadcast media in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Paraguay, as well as media and energy researchers from the region. 

Gaps in coverage

Across Latin America, this story is largely being missed. The energy transition is one of the region's most consequential developments: it will reshape land use, employment, water access and power relationships for decades. 

Yet it is covered sporadically, superficially, and through narrow frameworks borrowed from global energy reporting that don't account for Latin America's particular position. The graphic below illustrates some of the reasons coverage falls short. 

The result: thin, event-driven, source-narrow coverage that tells readers what governments announced and companies promised, but rarely who controls the infrastructure, who was consulted, or who bears the cost. Breaking this pattern requires five different questions – not as a formula, but as tools that can reveal what is hidden.

1. Who benefits and who bears the cost? 

Every energy project distributes gains and burdens — land, water, electricity access, profit, risk — unevenly. At Puerto Peñasco, the benefits go to distant consumers. The costs land on Tohono O'odham territory. Asking this question means moving beyond headline metrics — gigawatts installed, investment figures — toward the actual political economy of the project.

2. Whose transition are we talking about? 

A ministerial announcement and a community resistance movement both use the word "transition," but they describe competing futures. One describes technical capacity and economic growth. The other describes loss of control and dispossession. Treating them as the same story is itself a choice.

3. Whose voices are we missing? 

The typical energy story quotes government, company, and perhaps one community representative. Missing: environmental lawyers who understand prior consultation rights, energy justice researchers offering independent analysis, women's organisations (since women often experience the impacts of infrastructure decisions differently, particularly in relation to livelihoods, care work and access to natural resources), labour unions in fossil fuel sectors, and academics not financially tied to the industry.

4. Where does the story begin and end? 

A solar farm requires minerals extracted somewhere — silicon, silver, copper. The components enabling European renewable expansion may have been extracted under conditions the Tohono O'odham are contesting. Supply chains connect distant stories. Making that connection visible is where accountability begins.

5. Am I covering an event or a process? 

Each renewable project generates events: announcements, ceremonies, investment figures. What the community's situation looks like two years from now – whether consultation happened, whether electricity access improved, what actually changed –is a different story. Event-driven coverage won't follow it; journalists must.

Conclusion

The full report can be downloaded as a PDF below and walks through how to apply these questions in practice, with concrete reporting tools and common pitfalls to avoid. There is also a tear sheet, summarising the questions and tools. 

Many journalists in Latin America are already doing remarkable work despite precarious conditions. What this framework offers is language for what they already know: the energy transition in Latin America is a story about power – who has it, who exercises it, and who pays the price.