Back in 2007, Uruguay had a serious problem with no obvious answer: The economy was growing very fast, but there wasn't enough energy to power the rapid 1 .
Then Ramón Méndez Galain, a physicist, started 2 different potential paths for Uruguay's energy future. Finally, he wrote a plan that Uruguay could almost entirely 3 renewable energy. There would be less 4 and it would be the most economical choice Uruguay could make in the long run.
Méndez Galain's plan was built around two simple 5 about his country. First, while there wasn't a domestic(国内的) supply of coal or oil, there was a great deal of 6 .Second, that wind blew over a country that was known for 7 grassland. His plan for Uruguay's energy future was to 8 the empty grassland into hundreds of wind farms.
To solve the problem of how to pay for all those wind farms, Méndez Galain came up with a variation on a(n) 9 used by some electric plants in neighboring Brazil, in which state owned power plants handled energy generation, while 10 companies were in charge of power distribution and customer service. Méndez Galain's plan changed the relationship to the 11 , so that private companies would be in charge of setting up and 12 the wind farms, while the state-owned power companies would distribute that energy to its customers.
The strategy worked 13 well. Just within a few years, Méndez Galain had 14 what he had set out to do: 98% of Uruguay's 15 comes from renewable sources.
