Seizing Mexico’s full renewable energy potential

Posted on
Isaura Espinosa de los Mon­teros Hino­josa, par­tic­i­pant of the COBENEFITS Online Train­ing, Mexico

In this part of our series Co-ben­e­fits Sto­ries, Isaura Espinosa de los Mon­teros Hino­josa dis­cuss­es how Mex­i­co can meet future chal­lenges with renew­able ener­gies. For this series, we have asked ener­gy pro­fes­sion­als that have par­tic­i­pat­ed in our train­ings for their thoughts and expe­ri­ences on co-ben­e­fits of renew­able ener­gy in their country.

“Cur­rent­ly, we are expe­ri­enc­ing the third wave of COVID in Mex­i­co with­out busi­ness and school clos­ings because of the pandemic’s impact on the econ­o­my. Peo­ple are crit­i­cal about the cur­rent pol­i­cy deci­sions putting people’s health at risk in favour of the econ­o­my. Shouldn’t we be think­ing of anoth­er solu­tion instead of going back to “nor­mal”? A Green Recov­ery strat­e­gy focus­ing on all sec­tors could max­i­mize nation­al val­ue cre­ation whilst focus­ing on achiev­ing the country’s NDCs. Specif­i­cal­ly, a Green Recov­ery focus­ing on renew­able ener­gy (RE) projects could prefer­ably be planned by the new­ly appoint­ed Min­istry of Welfare.

Mex­i­co has a high poten­tial for RE: with its 15° to 35° lat­i­tude, it is con­sid­ered to be a very favourable region for solar resources. The regions with the high­est poten­tial are in the North­east, South­east and South­west of the coun­try. Their econ­o­my has been hit great­ly by the pan­dem­ic as they rely on tourism and agri­cul­ture. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, they are affect­ed by nat­ur­al events such as hur­ri­canes and floods. Fur­ther­more, Mex­i­co has a high wind pow­er poten­tial in South­ern and cen­tral regions. Strength­en­ing both tech­nolo­gies would boost the econ­o­my and pave the way towards an ener­gy transition.

Tools that help to mea­sure the job cre­ation of such invest­ments might con­vince sub­na­tion­al gov­ern­ments, as they are eager to find ways to improve their econ­o­my, ben­e­fit their con­stituents and meet their own mit­i­ga­tion targets.”

Based on insights of the COBENEFITS research group, the Renew­ables Acad­e­my (RENAC) cur­rent­ly con­ducts train­ings in Turkey, Kenya, South Africa and Mex­i­co. Par­tic­i­pants learn about co-ben­e­fits of renew­able ener­gy in cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion, tools to quan­ti­fy and com­mu­ni­cate social and eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties and poli­cies and instru­ments to mobilise them.