Mexican wind power industry bemoans slowdown in growth under López Obrador - BNamericas English
Mexican wind power industry bemoans slowdown in growth under López Obrador - BNamericas
Mexican wind power industry bemoans slowdown in growth under López Obrador
Bnamericas Published: Friday, February 23, 2024
The Mexican wind power industry had expectations of doubling capacity from 6GW to 12GW during the six-year term of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that ends in October. However, by the end of 2023, capacity had only reached 7.4GW.
There are 5GW currently in the pipeline, meaning projects under development, and another 800MW at seven farms that are already built but have not started operations because of a lack of permits, representatives of Mexican wind power association Amdee told reporters on Thursday.
Of the seven, four are undergoing testing and represent 500MW, while the other three already have their commercial operations date scheduled for two to three months from now, said the association’s executive director Héctor Treviño (second, right-left).
Asked about the names of the projects, Amdee officials said they could not disclose too many details because of confidentiality agreements but mentioned Tamaulipas and Coahuila as two of the states where the farms are located.
“That is what we mean when we talk about legal certainty, clear rules, non-retroactivity in new laws because at the time these companies built [the projects] were based on the rules then in place,” said Amdee president Gerardo Pérez Guerra (second, left-right).
López Obrador’s electric power strategy has centered on prioritizing natural gas and other thermal generation, in addition to imposing obstacles to renewable firms that benefited the most from the 2013 energy reforms of former president Enrique Peña Nieto that opened the energy market to the private sector.
According to data from the association, wind power capacity grew at an annual rate of 31.5% from 2010 to 2019, reaching nearly 5GW in 2018 and rising to over 6GW the following year. From 2019-23, capacity grew just 5% annually, according to Amdee.
Energy regulator CRE has granted only one wind power generation permit this year.
Even though Pérez said he did not believe CRE is an autonomous agency, he rejected the idea of scrapping the regulator as López Obrador is proposing in his package of 18 constitutional reforms and two laws sent to congress this month.
The proposal also includes eliminating antimonopoly watchdog Cofece, telecom regulator IFT and hydrocarbons commission CNH.
Presidential frontrunners
Mauricio Herrera (far right), also on Amdee’s board, said the association has had meetings with the teams of both frontrunners in the June 2 presidential elections: former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, from López Obrador’s Morena party, and senator Xóchitl Gálvez, from the opposition coalition.
He said that Amdee has put a series of proposals on the table, among which four stand out:
-Expand the transmission network
-Reactivate investments in large-scale renewables
-Design public-private partnerships
-Take advantage of storage to contribute to the transmission network
“We have a positive expectation that our proposals will be heard,” Pérez said, recalling that both Sheinbaum and Gálvez have said they will step up efforts to help the country reach its clean energy generation commitments and speed up the country’s energy transition.
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