The global energy transition is transforming far more than energy systems. It is reshaping geopolitical relations, regional integration processes, and development strategies across the world. As a region endowed with abundant renewable energy resources, critical minerals, and vast hydropower potential, Latin America occupies a strategic position within this emerging global energy order.

This volume examines how the geopolitics of the energy transition is redefining Latin America's place in an emerging global energy order and challenging traditional approaches to regional integration. Moving beyond technological perspectives, it explores how geopolitical competition, political economy, financial structures, infrastructure development, and historically embedded asymmetries shape the region's energy futures and development pathways. At the same time, it investigates how the energy transition creates new opportunities for regional cooperation while exposing persistent tensions between collective interests, national strategies, and external geopolitical pressures.

Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapters explore the multiple dimensions of this transformation. The book analyzes the roles of international financial institutions, energy diplomacy, critical minerals, hydropower, biofuels, green hydrogen, renewable energy technologies, and cross-border electricity systems, while examining how states, corporations. It also explores how international actors influence investment patterns, governance arrangements, and regional development trajectories.

A central theme throughout the volume is the relationship between energy transition and regional integration. The book investigates how infrastructures, markets, and cooperative arrangements can strengthen energy security, industrial development, and regional bargaining power, while also revealing persistent challenges associated with unequal development, socio-environmental conflicts, and competing national interests.

In addition to addressing questions of infrastructure and markets, it highlights the social and territorial dimensions of the transition. Ultimately, it shows that Latin America's future hinges on more than just its abundant natural resources. It also depends on its ability to strengthen regional cooperation, position itself strategically within an increasingly competitive geopolitical landscape, and influence the development of the emerging energy order in line with its own developmental priorities.

Lira Luz Benites Lazaro holds a Ph.D. in Earth System Science from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE, Brazil) and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Latin American Integration from the University of São Paulo (PROLAM-USP). She is an Associate Researcher at the São Paulo Center for Energy Transition Studies (CPTEn), where she conducts interdisciplinary research on the political, social, and governance dimensions of climate and energy transitions in Latin America. She is a collaborating professor in the Graduate Program in Energy Systems Planning (PSE-UNICAMP) and at the School of Applied Sciences (FCA-UNICAMP), where she leads the research project Energy Transition: Governance, Market Dynamics, and Public Acceptance of Renewable Energies in Brazil.

Her international academic experience includes appointments as a Visiting Researcher at Durham University and the Durham Energy Institute (United Kingdom), where she explored the social and political dimensions of energy transitions, as well as, the politics of water-energy-food nexus of biofuels; at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), where she investigated just energy transitions and climate governance; and at the University of Kassel (Germany), where her research focused on extractivism, critical minerals, and the geopolitical challenges associated with the global energy transition.

She actively participates in national and international research networks, including the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), where she coordinates research initiatives on energy poverty, energy justice, gender, and the geopolitics of the energy transition in Latin America. She is also a member of the Ibero-American Network for the Promotion of Local Energy Communities for a Just and Sustainable Transition (RIPCEL). Her research examines the social and political dimensions of climate and energy transitions, exploring how actor coalitions, governance arrangements, and competing narratives and discourses shape energy and development pathways in Latin America. She investigates the interactions among states, corporations, international organizations, and civil society, and their implications for regional integration, socio-environmental governance, and sustainability transitions.

Ana Lía Guerrero holds a Ph.D. in Geography and a Master’s Degree in Policies and Strategies from the National University of the South (UNS), Argentina. She also earned a Teaching Degree and a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She is currently a full-time Associate Professor of Geography of the Americas and Oceania in the Department of Geography and Tourism at the National University of the South (UNS), Bahía Blanca, Argentina. She teaches at the graduate level in the Master’s Program in Policy and Strategy, the Master’s Program in Management and Territorial Development, and the Higher Diploma Program in Renewable Energy Economics, all offered by the Department of Economics at UNS. 

She leads the research project “Geopolitics and Territory: Emerging Territorial Processes in the Local–Global Articulation in Latin America.” She served as Director of the Editorial Committee of the Revista Universitaria de Geografía (RUG) from 2020 to 2024. She is a member of the Energy and Sustainable Development Working Group of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), where she coordinates the research lines on the Geopolitics of the Energy Transition and Regional Integration. She also represents the National University of the South on the Academic Energy Committee of the Montevideo Group Universities Association (CAE-AUGM). She is a member of the Institute for Economic and Social Research of the South (IIESS-CONICET/UNS). Her research focuses on the geopolitics of energy, energy transition processes, and energy integration in South America.