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Between March 11 and the end of August 2026, Chile's environmental review system (SEIA) cleared US$32.923 billion in projects — the highest total for any government's opening stretch in at least 20 years.
- Three ventures drive the surge: HNH Energy's US$11 billion green hydrogen plant in Magallanes, the US$5 billion Aguas Marítimas desalination project, and the US$4 billion San Antonio outer port.
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President José Antonio Kast used the figures at the UN General Assembly on September 22 to declare "Chile is back," though analysts warn that approval is not the same as construction.
The investment that made it through environmental review during the government's first half-year has become the card the governing coalition holds up as proof of a turning point. Between March 11 and the close of August 2026, the Environmental Impact Assessment System granted favorable rulings to ventures worth US$32.923 billion, a sum authorities and the trade press tend to round to roughly US$33 billion.
The strongest opening in at least two decades
A study by the Interior Ministry's research division, reported by La Tercera, found this to be the largest volume for the early months of any administration since comparable records began. The result comfortably quadruples what Sebastián Piñera's second term posted over the same window — 4.2 times more — and it also tops the marks set by Gabriel Boric (3.7 times) and by Michelle Bachelet's second government (2.9 times). For context, all of 2025 closed with approvals of about US$41.530 billion, so the half-year already equals close to 79% of that annual peak.
Three megaprojects explain the leap
The rebound rests on a handful of large-scale initiatives. In August, the HNH Energy green hydrogen and ammonia development in Magallanes was approved at US$11 billion, the biggest single investment ever cleared by the system. May had already added the Aguas Marítimas desalination plant (US$5 billion) and the San Antonio outer port (US$4 billion). Both months set milestones: May reached US$13.962 billion, the highest monthly figure on record, and August ranked second, at about US$12.900 billion. The bulk of this pipeline clusters in energy, water and infrastructure, sectors aligned with the shift toward an emissions-free power mix.
"Chile is back": the message in New York
The economic data won a global showcase when President Kast spoke on September 22 before the 81st UN General Assembly. In his first address as head of state, he leaned on a single refrain — telling delegates he had come to report that "Chile is back" — and urged investors to look toward the country. On the economy, as El Mostrador reported, he defended cutting the corporate tax rate from 27% to 23%, a 20-year tax-stability guarantee for large projects, and his push to trim the country's permitting backlog. The speech also carried a blunt critique of the multilateral body's own bureaucracy.
How much capital knocked on the door
On the initial interest there are nuances worth keeping in mind depending on the source. At the UN, Kast said applications worth more than US$44 billion entered the environmental system during his first half-year. The Interior Ministry study, by contrast, counted roughly US$38.300 billion in newly filed projects over that same span. Taking the more conservative measure, the gap between the two figures runs to about US$6 billion. Either way, both point to a robust pipeline: at the most recent count the SEIA held 361 initiatives under review worth some US$88.748 billion, with Antofagasta and Magallanes as the hubs.
The caveat: approving is not building
Behind the headline, caution lingers. The official analysis itself acknowledges that the approved amount is not enough to speak of a structural improvement: what matters next is the real length of processing, the challenges that follow, and above all how many favorable rulings actually turn into built works and effective investment. To that comes a physical hurdle: the rapid green light for renewable generation plants demands a parallel reinforcement of transmission grids and storage, without which approved projects risk running into distribution bottlenecks. The record number, in short, measures expectations more than kilowatts already connected.
