The State must lead, convene, enable, coordinate, reduce risks and attract private capital.
Third column in the series ¿Petrostate or electrostate?
Turning Chile into an electrostate requires a strategic State capable of looking fifty years ahead. A State that leads, convenes, enables, coordinates, reduces risks, attracts the enormous volume of private capital we will need and facilitates its implementation. It is not about choosing between State or market, but about ensuring that both have the same purpose.
The urgency is enormous. The global competition for cheap electricity to establish data centers and energy-intensive industries has already begun. Chile has the desert sun, the winds of Patagonia, copper and lithium, a mining industry that cannot be moved to another continent and a privileged position facing the Pacific. But transforming these natural advantages into development requires vision, purpose, leadership and a depoliticized policy decision.
Chile has already faced similar challenges. In 1939, CORFO was created because the country understood that its industrial development required an investment and coordination capacity that the domestic market alone could not generate. From that vision came ENDESA and CAP, both with mixed participation from the State and private sector.
This is not about returning to the entrepreneurial State of the twentieth century. It is about recovering the State’s capacity to imagine and build the future together with the private sector.
The United States offers another example. In 1961, John F. Kennedy called on his country to land a man on the Moon and return him safely before the end of the decade. It seemed like an excessive goal. The U.S. government provided the purpose, resources and coordination; universities, research centers, and numerous private companies developed much of the necessary technology. Eight years later, Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.
Chile has an equally illustrative contemporary experience: astronomy. We possess some of the best skies on the planet, but that natural advantage alone would not have turned us into a global center for astronomy. The State entered into international agreements, provided special conditions for installing large observatories and secured benefits for national science, including access for Chilean institutions to observing capacity, human capital development, and research.
What we did with our skies we can do with our sun and our wind. Today, to become an electrostate, we need Chile to define where we want to be in fifty years and build the conditions to get there. And when we think in terms of a fifty-year horizon, planning becomes relevant again.
We need to build what in English they call the big picture: the big picture of the electrostate we want to build. Where generation plants and storage systems will be located; what public works we will need; where available public land exists; what water and digital infrastructure will be necessary; what submarine cables will connect us with the Americas and the other continents; what role universities will play in training technicians, engineers and scientists; what laws we need to establish stable rules and efficient approval processes; how to develop a financial ecosystem capable of supporting pioneering investments; and what global diplomacy we will deploy to attract the world’s largest technology and energy investors, while maintaining our neutrality and balance vis-à-vis the hegemonic powers.
If Chile provides exceptional conditions for the industries of the future to establish themselves here, those investments must leave capabilities in our country: research, human capital development, domestic suppliers, technology transfer, innovation and regional development. It is not enough to fill the desert with solar panels, batteries and buildings housing servers. The goal is to use that infrastructure to transform our economy.
Here a dimension emerges that we must incorporate more strongly into the economic debate. Much of our discussion focuses on measures that, while important, aspire to achieve marginal increases in growth: a few additional tenths of a percentage point of GDP. Turning Chile into an electrostate belongs to another scale. If we manage to attract massive investments in generation, storage, transmission, mining, data centers, artificial intelligence and new manufacturing, the impact could mean several additional percentage points of growth for many years. We would not be managing the existing economy better; we would be structurally expanding its capacity to grow.
But to do so we need planning and coordination. That is the irreplaceable role of the State.
More than eighty years ago Chile decided to build the energy and industrial infrastructure it needed to develop. Sixty years ago, the United States decided to reach the Moon. And Chile understood that its skies could become a platform for developing world-class astronomy.
Now we have a new opportunity before us.
The challenge is not to choose between State or market. It is to ensure that the State and the market have the same purpose: to transform Chile into an electrostate and build, starting today, the country we want to be fifty years from now.
