• INCENTIVES: President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed amendments to Mexico’s electric industry law -to favor state-run utility (CFE)- would effectively kill the country’s market of clean energy certificates (CELs) designed to foster green power generation to meet its climate goals.
• PROPOSAL: The Mexican Congress is set to consider president López Obrador’s proposed bill that would allow CFE’s legacy hydro and geothermal power plants to be eligible to receive CELs in detriment of newer private solar and wind projects developed after 2014.
• MARKET: “With the amount of CELs that this change would be injecting, they would be flooding the market. The mechanism that previously served to increase clean (energy) generation would no longer be of any use,” said Federico Muciño, an electricity industry specialist at Epscon consulting firm.
• CLIMATE: As established by Mexico’s landmark 2013 energy reforms, power generators are entitled to one bankable CEL for each megawatt-hour (MWh) of clean energy they produce. Power suppliers are legally required to supply a percentage of their electricity from renewable sources.
