Latin America was supposed to inherit the US retreat. The capital hasn't followed
US developers canceled 1,891 power projects in 2025, totaling 266 GW of capacity, per Cleanview's tracking of the sector. Clean energy accounted for 93% of that: 86 GW of utility-scale solar, 79 GW of battery storage, 54 GW of wind. The read in every LATAM investment deck since has been the same. Capital chasing the transition would simply walk south. Look at where it actually went, and Latin America's share of global private clean energy investment sits at just 5%, per the IEA's most recent World Energy Investment report, nothing close to what a straight reallocation of that scale would produce.
That is not a small gap between narrative and number.
Why the money didn't cross the border
Most of what got canceled in the United States was financed on a structure that does not exist south of the Rio Grande. US utility-scale wind and solar runs on tax equity, banks and insurers monetizing transferable investment and production tax credits, stacked with back-leverage debt sized against that credit stream. When OBBBA compressed the placed-in-service deadlines for 45Y and 48E, it did not just kill projects. It killed the tax liability those projects were built to offset, and the capital sitting behind that liability does not become footloose. It becomes irrelevant to the next deal, because the next deal has to be a US one with US tax exposure to shelter.
A Peruvian or Chilean project is not financed that way. It is non-recourse project debt sized to a DSCR against a contracted or merchant revenue line, backed by infra equity that never touched a US tax return. The investor universe barely overlaps with the tax-equity desks that just lost their pipeline.
A tax credit that a US project loses does not reappear as a loan a Peruvian DSCR model can use.
Development teams carry the same mismatch. An interconnection specialist who spent a decade queuing projects through PJM or ERCOT is not immediately useful navigating COES's queue or a consulta previa timeline in the Peruvian highlands. Redeploying that expertise across a hemisphere takes years, not a press release.
What actually does cross
LATAM clean energy investment did grow, reaching roughly $70 billion in 2025, up nearly 25% from 2015 levels, per the IEA. That is a decade of cumulative build, not a post-cancellation surge, and the gains concentrated in a handful of markets: Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica each roughly doubled the renewable investment flowing in over that period, per the same IEA data. The smaller, more liquid markets pulled ahead of the region's traditional anchors well before OBBBA existed.
What is more likely to move in the next eighteen months is hardware, not capital stacks. Panel, turbine and inverter order books built for now-canceled US megaprojects need a buyer, and manufacturers holding that inventory have every incentive to discount into whichever market still takes delivery. LATAM developers with permitted land and interconnection slots are a natural landing spot. That is a real capex tailwind, and it is a different thing from a financing tailwind.
What we think follows
The region that benefits sits narrower than "Latin America": markets with project finance infrastructure liquid enough to absorb generalist infra capital on short notice, a bankable offtaker, a functioning PPA market or a credible merchant tail, and a regulator that answers interconnection questions on a fixed timeline.
The counterargument has real weight. Infra funds raise generalist mandates precisely so capital can move across borders faster than tax structures can, and a large enough repricing in the US eventually pulls some of that money south regardless of the mismatch. Eventually is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Our own pipeline is built for the financing that actually exists here, not the one that just got canceled somewhere else. ZFC Energy Group's 870+ MW pipeline in Peru is underwritten on project debt against contracted and merchant cash flow, not against a US tax credit's shelf life. Olmos Wind (approximately 135 MW with integrated battery storage, Lambayeque, targeting Ready-to-Build in the first quarter of 2028) and Frontera (approximately 135 MW, Lambayeque, RtB 2028) lead the near-term pipeline, alongside Aurelion (300 MW bifacial solar, Moquegua, RtB 2028) and Solar II (300 MW bifacial solar, Moquegua, RtB 2029). We are targeting 2 GW+ installed across LATAM by 2030, with Fitcon Energy giving the platform in-house EPC capability to convert equipment into steel without importing a capital structure that was never built to travel.
The open question
I do not know whether the next 12 to 18 months bring the talent and equipment that actually can cross the border, compressing origination timelines for developers already active here, or whether the capital sitting behind those canceled US projects simply waits out a possible reversal in Washington rather than commit to the harder underwriting a LATAM deal requires. Both are live possibilities, and the honest answer is that nobody has enough data yet to call it.
Either way, the region gets there on its own project finance discipline. Not on someone else's leftover tax break.
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