Biography
From 2016 to 2018, Sebastián Kind led Argentina’s energy transition as Undersecretary of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. Previously, he was the founding director of the Master of Science in Renewable Energy Program at National Technological University (UTN), and he worked closely with Argentina’s National Senate as author of the Renewable Energy National Law. He has advised on renewable energy projects for many public and private institutions around the world and has held executive positions in the private sector in Europe and Latin America.
In 2018, he was appointed as Chair of the Council of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), and was selected as a Fellow of the Eisenhower Foundation in Philadelphia and as a Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2019, he received the Clean Energy Award of the Latin American and Caribbean Council on Renewable Energy (LAC-CORE).
Sebastián holds a degree in mechanical engineering from UTN in Argentina and earned a MSc. in renewable energy from EUREC Agency in Brussels, NTUA in Greece, and University of Zaragoza in Spain. He also holds an Executive Development Diploma from IAE Business School and has participated in various executive programs at Harvard University.
Sebastián possesses the powerful combination of knowing how to both design innovative new solutions and how to work with numerous decision-makers and stakeholders to turn his ideas into real-world programs with the capacity to operate at scale. When he became Undersecretary for Renewable Energy in Argentina in 2016, he was tasked with catalyzing renewable energy development amid a deep economic crisis in a country with a wealth of renewable potential but a power sector dominated by fossil fuels.
The program he designed to achieve this objective, RenovAr, became an international success story even though he had to overcome significant skepticism and even opposition from within both the Argentinian government and multilateral financial institutions. At the time, said Sebastián, Argentina almost did not have renewables in the mix, and now wind and solar represent around 32 percent of the peak coverage in the electricity market.
Breakthrough Program
Sebastián was selected for the Climate Breakthrough Award program in 2019.
Renewable energy investment is lagging in developing countries (excluding China and India) despite their potential because they have higher costs of capital compared to developed countries. Using his successful experience in Argentina and using RenovAr as an inspiration, Sebastián is looking to build a unique model platform, then work with developing countries using the platform to design strong policy frameworks and credit-enhancement tools in an effort to attract investment and reduce risks. The impact can be transformative: improve the creditworthiness of the countries, making renewable energy projects more attractive to investors and ultimately lowering costs and accelerating adoption.