The government bases its strategy for the imposition of the electrical counter-reform on lies and ideological anachronisms. He repeats them ad nauseam, now in the Open Parliament. We must unmask them. Some of the most repeated lies are refuted here.
1. Control of the electrical system was not lost. The State maintains it through the National Energy Control Center (CENACE), the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), and the different subsidiaries of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
2. The rise in electricity prices in Europe is not due to private generation and the market. It has been caused by the increase in natural gas prices, by Russia’s manipulation of gas pipeline supplies, by the erroneous closure of nuclear plants in Germany and Great Britain, by the maintenance of several nuclear plants in France, and by the anti-global warming policies that limit coal-fired power generation.
3. Clean energies allow a stable and reliable electricity grid if it is properly managed, as demonstrated by Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Texas, California and many other cases, where the penetration of renewable energies is very high. while the lowest rates of blackouts are recorded (System Average Interruption Duration Index – SAIDI).
4. The number of generation permits granted by the CRE does not generate “disorder”. Permissions are just that. For a plant to come into operation, an interconnection permit is needed, and this is only granted by CENACE after thorough technical studies.
5. The lowest electricity costs in the world at the time were obtained in the Third Long-Term Clean Energy Auction in 2017. This government canceled them. Rates were not lowered accordingly because President López ordered it; provided that basic rates increase with inflation.
6. The CFE was not being privatized and had been strengthened. It had positive financial results for the first time, labor liabilities were reduced, it was able to supply itself with cheap and clean energy, it achieved new businesses and income such as natural gas, it was given a new fiscal and tax regime, and transparency in subsidies. Now he’s back at a loss.
7. Nobody wanted the CFE to “disappear”. The company excluded itself from the auctions and has not been able to undertake a single new project in more than six years. CFE does not have the investment or execution capacity to generate “54%” of energy in scenarios of growing demand.
8. CFE does not promote clean energy. The repowering of hydroelectric plants is to increase their useful life. It only adds 0.3% to the generation capacity. The Sonora solar plant is oversized, poorly located, and is still a chimera.
9. They did not give Clean Energy Certificates (CEL) to CFE’s old and amortized plants, because CELs are an instrument to promote new investment in clean generation.
10. Dispatch of energy by economic merit at marginal cost without taking into account fixed costs is the most efficient according to any basic economics book. Clean energy wins since its marginal cost is almost zero.
11. With the counter-reform there would be no market, prices and dispatch would be established discretionally by CFE. All Self-Supply and Independent Energy Production permits will be cancelled. The private sector could not participate under these conditions.
12. Self-sufficiency is not an abuse. The fact that there are several or many buying partners is permitted by law, and it is logical that companies seek the lowest energy prices. In any case, self-supply will be extinguished in a short time and will go to market.
13. Private companies pay less for energy because they buy it from private clean energy companies.
14. Legacy contracts between CFE and private companies have relatively high costs (energy, capacity, fixed charges) because when the projects were built 15 or 20 years ago, clean energy was still not that cheap. They can be renegotiated, in addition to the fact that they will also soon be extinguished.
15. Private companies pay less for broadcasting because they invested in the networks through open seasons. If there are cases of abuse, let them be corrected.
16. CFE was broken down into several companies (generation, basic supply, distribution, marketing) because it is the most efficient. If the creation of several subsidiary companies in generation did not turn out to be the best, it is very easy to solve; it is reintegrated into a single company and that’s it.
17. Energy sovereignty does not lie in a government monopoly, but in diversity of sources, certainty, stability and reliability, accessible prices, low emissions, sufficient supply, distributed generation. This can only be achieved with private investment. Or what: should we nationalize and monopolize the production of food, health and medicine, education, just because they correspond to human rights and strategic sectors?
@g_quadri
Civil Engineer and Economist
Serious Green
Mexican politician, liberal environmentalist and researcher, he has served as a public official and activist in the private sector. He was the candidate of the Nueva Alianza party for President of Mexico in the 2012 elections.
