The dependency has established as part of the plan new protected areas, the Sembrando Vida project, a carbon capture strategy and the increase in the renewable generation park.
Mexico, which has managed its energy policy from a fence to new private projects and has recently announced from CFE new plans related to renewable energy, has proposed increasing its renewable generation park by 40 gigawatts. “The announcement is quite transgressive, it comes completely contrary to what has been handled from the public narrative. In terms of narrative, this changes everything,” says Pablo Ramírez, from Greenpeace, one of the organizations that has taken the changes to energy policy to court.
To dimension, according to official records, the country has around 25 gigawatts of installed capacity between solar, wind and hydroelectric plants owned by private companies and the state-owned CFE. The Mexican government would have committed to more than doubling the current capacity and analysts see it as unfeasible.
Semarnat has presented in a document that the objective of increasing renewable energy generation includes seven wind power plants, four solar plants in Sonora and the modernization of 12 hydroelectric plants. In total, an increase of 6.6 gigawatts. A few days ago, in his appearance before Deputies, the director of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett, said that the state company would increase its renewable generation park with projects that would be defined before the end of the six-year term, without giving further details. The announcement from the Ministry of Foreign Relations leaves in uncertainty where the remaining little more than 30 gigawatts will come from, of which their origin has not been specified.
“We will mobilize the public and private sectors to double the generation capacity of clean energy in Mexico,” Ebrard said at the conference on Saturday. But while the foreign minister’s announcement was made in Egypt, the federal government has not given clear signals about an upcoming opening to the private sector.
The only announcement has been made since the presidency, when last June President López Obrador said that the US private sector could implement some renewable projects in the country. But weeks later, the US government submitted a request for consultations on Mexican energy policy.
In Egypt, what the federal government has called “the Sonora plan” has been detailed. an industrial project that seeks to turn the border state into an industrial hub based on the extraction of lithium and the production of semiconductors. The plan, of which more details are becoming known little by little, would include the construction of four solar parks, which would add 4 gigawatts to the electrical system. The state-owned CFE is already building one in Puerto Peñasco, which would add 1 gigawatt to the electricity production capacity in 2028, when, according to plans, its construction is completed.
An analyst explains in a simple way what it would mean to adhere to the electrical system the goal presented by Foreign Minister Ebrard: it would imply adding 40 solar parks like the one that has begun to be built in Puerto Peñasco in the next eight years. The modernization plan for the 12 hydroelectric plants, which is mentioned so much by the president, is only planned to add 300 megawatts to the system, that is, barely 0.75% of the announced objective.
The alarms have been raised from the Ministry of Energy and other agencies, some fractions describe the plan as “technically unattainable”, two sources told Expansion. The national interconnected system registers a maximum demand of 45 gigawatts. The goal announced in Egypt would imply adding a similar amount to the energy consumed daily in the country. “There would not even be a demand to consume the energy that would be produced with these plants,” says one of the sources.
The federal government has based its strategy of not granting more electricity generation permits to the private initiative on the argument that the installed generation capacity far exceeds the demand. The records of the agency say that in the country there are around 90 gigawatts to generate electricity. Putting the announcement into practice would put an end to the argument in which the changes to electricity policy have been sustained.
The goal committed by Mexico would imply drastic changes to the energy policy that has been put into practice up to now: the permits that have not been approved by the regulator would have to be unlocked; put into operation the private wind farms that have already been built; end with the proposal to change the dispatch order in which electricity is used to favor the state-owned CFE power plants –which run on fossil fuels–; resume the retirement plan of some of the older plants and resume electricity auctions, which were canceled at the beginning of the six-year term. A 180 degree turn to what has now been the strategy since the presidency.
“We find the 35% reduction goal ambitious and very good and we love that part of that goal is to increase renewables because that is what we have been asking for four years. But everything would have to start in the first quarter of next year because there isn’t time either, if we lose a few more years, if the remaining two years of this administration are lost, if they are also lost like the first four, we won’t be able to, come on who comes [en el siguiente sexenio]”, says Adrián Fernández, from the Mexico Climate Initiative. “If it is not done like this, from the beginning the world will realize that we lied, that we simply wanted to simulate.”
The announcement has already been made, but the official document that will lead the way has not yet been published. It will be until then, the interviewees say, that it will be defined how good the announcement given in Egypt has been.