Iberdrola removes the regional investment focus from Mexico and passes it to the United States

The private company with the largest installed capacity for electricity generation in Mexico: the Spanish Iberdrola, which has been one of the most attacked by the current administration that seeks to retake the market for the state company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), left Mexico out of its focus of regional interest and will invest 47 billion euros between 2023 and 2025, of which half will go to the United States, a country that offers “legal and regulatory certainty for company investors,” said Enrique Alba, CEO of Iberdrola Mexico.

“The United States has announced an ambitious plan to combat climate change and end carbon emissions, which is in line with our goals and where we find legal and regulatory certainty for the company’s investors,” said the businessman at the Digital Summit. of the Iberian firm.

Of the investment, 11,000 million euros will be for the acquisition of PNM Resources, in New Mexico, which since 2020 intends to merge with its US subsidiary Avangrid, an operation that remains in dispute due to the rejection of the entity’s electricity regulator and that the Ibérica will seek to carry out along with other transactions in Texas, according to Enrique Alba.

It should be remembered that five years ago, Enrique Alba himself announced that with an investment of 1.7 billion dollars, the Spanish Iberdrola it would reach an installed capacity of 10,200 megawatts in Mexico by 2020, with which it would generate more energy in Mexico than in Spain. This, during a media visit to its Dulces Nombres combined cycle plant in Pesquería, Nuevo León, which was the first independent energy production project for the Spanish CFE in the country.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has repeatedly accused private power producers of acting outside the law, specifically naming Iberdrola.

Precisely in that plant where the announcement was made in 2017, in October of this year the Energy regulatory commission (CRE) denied Iberdrola authorization for the Spanish transnational to modify the generation permit for the Dulces Nombres plant and asked partners to disconnect from the other 11 plants that the firm operates in Mexico.

The governing body of the Mexican regulator voted in favor of a resolution that once again denied the modification to the conditions related to the use of energy and to the one related to the expansion plans of the power plant operated by Iberdrola Energía Monterrey (IEM) with permission E/205/AUT/2002.

Since November of last year, Iberdrola requested that its permit to operate under the wholesale electricity market regime be modified, but it was not authorized and the plant was even disconnected when its authorization expired.

Until now, Iberdrola was by far the largest private energy producer in the country, with a current generation capacity of 6,100 megawatts through 15 combined cycle, cogeneration and wind power plants in seven entities. From 2014 to date, it had invested 1.8 billion dollars and was also the largest independent producer for the CFEto whom he contributed 13% of his energy.

His plans were before the present administration began to become a supplier of more than 20% of the state’s energy in three years. To do this, it would add another 10 plants in four additional entities to its capacity located in Oaxaca, Tamaulipas, Baja California, Durango, Puebla and San Luis Potosí. With this, they intended to reach a volume of generated energy of 75 terawatts, when the volume of generation in Spain is just over 40 terawatts.

However, their plans in Mexico have not materialized and now they will seek to allocate their investments to electrify the economy and industry where they operate through smart grids, renewables, energy storage, green hydrogen, and decarbonization solutions, with the common denominator of digitization and automation. of technologies, although Mexico ceased to be their focus and now regionally they will focus on the United States.

Finally, Enrique Alba celebrated the commitments of the Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard for the decarbonization of some processes in the Mexican industry and recalled that at COP27 taking place in Egypt, Iberdrola committed to making all its processes carbon neutral by 2030 and reaching 2040 without CO2 emissions.