Energy policy, boomerang effect?

The current government is resenting the consequences of its own decisions on energy matters.

A strong impact is brewing in the national electricity industry that will hit right in the center of one of the emblematic projects of the six-year term, the Trans-Isthmic Corridor, about which there are high expectations.

The bottleneck you could run into is power, and more specifically, electrical transmission.

The Lopez Obrador government canceled from the beginning of its administration the investments in electrical transmission, projected by its predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, precisely for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and for the north of the country.

Such cancellations could –at the very least– delay promising investment projects in that region, including power generation parks.

And in the north, in Sonora – where it is planned to invest 48 billion dollars to generate 5 gigawatts – the cancellation of this government’s investments in transmission will impact Plan Sonora, that entity’s desert solar park.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced since December 2021 that, in the transisthmic corridor, his government has ready 8 of 10 industrial parks with a territorial extension of 380 hectares.

Last February, he said that four wind farms will be built in that region that will be managed by the Federal Electricity Commission and will be carried out with private investment and financing from the United States bank.

This week John Kerry, the United States government’s special envoy for Climate Change, confirmed his country’s investment in renewable energy in Mexico. Specifically in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Kerry’s complacent statements were surprising, which occurred in parallel to the verbal war between the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Mexican Chief Executive over the issue of drug trafficking.

In this context, the Secretaries of the Treasury, Rogelio Ramírez de la O, of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard and of the Economy, Raquel Buenrostro, have spoken with great enthusiasm regarding the potentiality of the investments that the Trans-Isthmic Corridor will attract.

A few weeks ago, Ebrard invited and took a large group of ambassadors in Mexico from different countries to Sonora to introduce them to the Plan Sonora project.

In recent months and weeks, it seems that there has been a change in the perspective of the Mexican government regarding clean energy.

However, in fact, except for some agreements and arrangements reached by the government with some companies in the electricity sector, there are no indications that reflect a change in the energy policy of this government, which has led to the consultations, which requested the US government and whose resolution in a dispute panel is still latent.

The transmission of electrical energy is the Achilles heel of the current government plans.

The energy expert, Víctor Ramírez, recalls that in the first months of this government, the tenders for two transmission lines whose function would be to transport energy generated by solar plants in the northwestern region of the country, in Sonora, to take it to Mexicali and thus connecting Baja California to the National Interconnected System.

And the other planned to connect Ixtepec, in Oaxaca, with Yautepec, in Morelos, to allow the installation of more wind power plants on the Isthmus and transport their energy for consumption in the center of the country.

If such investments had not been cancelled, today the government would have what is needed for its projects.

Now, the government has to make investments of between 1,200 and 1,400 million dollars in transmission to make its projects viable on the Isthmus and in Sonora.

He will surely find a way to do it. Most likely, it will take more time to carry it out, just what this administration no longer has. Let’s see.

glimpses

Today concludes the last visit of the US aeronautical authority, the FAA to Mexico and with it begins the final audit for Mexico to recover category 1 in aviation safety. Although it is still conditional on the Chamber of Deputies approving the package of reforms to the Civil Aviation and Airports Law, which includes the strengthening of the AFAC.

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