New World Profile of the MonthSeptember 2026
By: The Editorial Team at NES
Álvaro González Gorroño
Undersecretary of Mining, Chile
Ministry of Mining, Chile
This is Chile National month, and the best person to showcase Chile's flag is Mr. Alvaro González, the Undersecretary of Mining of this Nation.
Chile still mines more copper than any other country. It also produces less than it should. Output has been stuck for years in a band of roughly 5.0 to 5.5 million tonnes, even as the world talks about grids, EVs and data centres as if the metal will simply appear. In June, six months into the new administration, Undersecretary of Mining Álvaro González put the diagnosis on the page: permits that take too long, rules that change mid-project, too little exploration, falling grades. “El tiempo apremia, Chile no puede esperar. Cada tonelada adicional de mineral que logremos producir nos acerca al desarrollo.”
The line was not poetry. It was a policy bet. González is a lawyer, not a mine manager. His first half-year has been spent trying to turn Chile’s mining state from a veto machine back into a production machine: tax invariability for long-horizon capital, a mining-patent bill already through a Senate committee, safety and mine-closure rules being rewritten so that some permits become enabling techniques rather than sequential blockades, and a public claim that sectoral permitting times can fall 30 to 70 per cent. Critics hear industry capture. Investors hear the first coherent attempt in years to treat copper as a growth problem rather than a moral one. September 2026 is when that argument left the op-ed page and entered Congress.
Chile still mines more copper than any other country. It also produces less than it should. Output has been stuck for years in a band of roughly 5.0 to 5.5 million tonnes, even as the world talks about grids, EVs and data centres as if the metal will simply appear. In June, six months into the new administration, Undersecretary of Mining Álvaro González put the diagnosis on the page: permits that take too long, rules that change mid-project, too little exploration, falling grades. “El tiempo apremia, Chile no puede esperar. Cada tonelada adicional de mineral que logremos producir nos acerca al desarrollo.”
The line was not poetry. It was a policy bet. González is a lawyer, not a mine manager. His first half-year has been spent trying to turn Chile’s mining state from a veto machine back into a production machine: tax invariability for long-horizon capital, a mining-patent bill already through a Senate committee, safety and mine-closure rules being rewritten so that some permits become enabling techniques rather than sequential blockades, and a public claim that sectoral permitting times can fall 30 to 70 per cent. Critics hear industry capture. Investors hear the first coherent attempt in years to treat copper as a growth problem rather than a moral one. September 2026 is when that argument left the op-ed page and entered Congress.
Álvaro González matters this month because Chile is still the swing producer of the energy transition, and the country has spent a decade watching project pipelines swell while tonnes do not. He is the official charged with executing the Mining Plan 2026–2030 inside a bimistry led by Economy and Mining minister Daniel Mas. The plan’s three axes—investment certainty, faster permits, stronger mining institutions—are the practical answer to what Sonami called the “mining paradox”: good prices, weak volumes.
For NES readers in New York, Toronto, London and Vancouver, he is the person to watch if the question is whether Chilean copper, molybdenum, lithium and now rare earths will remain available to Western supply chains on predictable terms.
For NES readers in New York, Toronto, London and Vancouver, he is the person to watch if the question is whether Chilean copper, molybdenum, lithium and now rare earths will remain available to Western supply chains on predictable terms.
Key Facts
Age
44
Current Title
Undersecretary of Mining, Chile
Company HQ
Ministry of Mining, Santiago
Signature Focus
Mining Plan 2026–2030 — investment certainty, faster permits, copper-volume recovery and minerals diversification
