During the 2010s, Venezuela took what might appear to be a giant leap towards decarbonization. The Caribbean country’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry were cut by a third, falling from over 198 million tons per year in 2013, to just under 62 million tons in 2020, according to data from the Global Carbon Budget report.
However, this huge decline is not a sign of a government-driven clean energy push.
“There was a decrease in greenhouse gases, but it was not related to public policy, but to a drop in oil production — much exacerbated by the introduction of sanctions from the United States in 2019,” explains Christi Rangel Guerrero, an economist and researcher for the anti-corruption NGO Transparency Venezuela.
Some of these sanctions apply to PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company. These restrictions prohibit it from exporting crude oil to the U.S. and from buying supplies from U.S. companies to support gasoline production. Issued by the U.S. Treasury Department, the sanctions caused Venezuelan oil production — which was already struggling due to falling investment and losses of skilled personnel — to plummet.
According to data compiled by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Venezuela’s daily oil output fell from approximately 2.32 million barrels in December 2013 to 786,000 barrels in December 2023. This, as Rangel highlights, is the main reason for Venezuela’s falling carbon emissions.
However, Venezuela’s dependence on oil does not seem to be waning: President Nicolás Maduro’s administration is searching for new oil partnerships abroad; three-year-old climate change bills are crawling through parliament; meanwhile, businesses and individuals are turning to fossil-fuelled generators for their electricity.
The first challenge: Thermoelectric plants
Rangel lives in Mérida. Situated in the west of Venezuela, in the Andean region, the city is known for its mountain scenery — and, by many, for its constant power failures. Merideños can face daily power cuts that range from four to 12 hours, owing to a lack of investment in power infrastructure and a sector undermined by widespread corruption, beset by opaque bidding processes and billions lost in irregular payments.
As Venezuela’s oil production has fallen, so too has state investment to maintain its electricity service. Power cuts have been occurring in Mérida for more than a decade.
To overcome the often daily outages, companies, businesses, and even households have resorted to buying thermoelectric generators that run on fossil fuels — a practice also common in other Andean states such...
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