45% percent of households use wood as the main source of heating, electricity is 24%. https://www.ambito.com/uruguay/con-el-precio-la-lena-aumento...

And obviously this reduces the consumption of electricity, making it easier to cover the electricity needed with renewables.

Doesn't take anything away from it, it's still great that this is happening.

How does wood compare to gas/coal/etc? I always hear that biofuels are not great compared to other renewables, is wood somehow different? Doesn't it make lots of particulate if you don't have a high end modern stove?

That doesn't make it any less impressive. If a small industrial base can builds its own renewable infrastructure, then a larger, proportionally richer base should have less trouble doing it.

In terms of ease and industrial base required it seems to me much will come down to how much of the renewable generation is hydro (and how much is possible given an area's hydrology) since that is so much 'easier' than modern renewables. That's largely orthogonal to wealth/population/industrial capacity. Although I suppose greater industrialisation and wealth would increase energy demand per capita. In the US it is 6%. For Uruguay electricity is 37% hydro. It is still impressive though.

I reckon biomass is 'easy' as well but it is only so scalable.

Neither is very sexy because of hydro's environmental issues (and in some cases water supply inefficiency), and biomass burning being... biomass burning.

The US has a lot of nuclear which I would call "renewable enough," and that's not very sexy either.