• DIRTY: Mexico’s state-owned utility CFE drastically increased its use of electricity coming from mostly fuel-oil-burning power plants in January despite it being significantly more expensive and environmentally costlier than other sources of energy, Mexican regulator’s figures show.
• NUMBERS: Between December of 2020 and January of 2021, CFE’s use of power generated by conventional thermoelectric plants shot up 362 percent reaching 4.0 million MWh, according to Mexico’s energy regulatory commission CRE. Most of Mexico’s 59 thermoelectric plants burn fuel oil.
• COSTS: “Using thermoelectric plants more means paying more. And since most of them use fuel oil given that not all of them have dual-fuel (capability), there is also the cost…for the environment and the damage to (human) health”, said Víctor Ramírez, a specialist in the Mexican electric industry.
• STRATEGY: In 2020, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration presented a plan for CFE to use more fuel oil from state-owned refineries. Regulator’s figures show electricity from CFE’s fuel-oil powered plants was almost three times pricier than that produced by private renewables firms.
