1st phase of Mexican solar project to be operating in April
PUERTO PENASCO, Mexico –
Mexico was pushed to speed up its flip towards renewable power after Russia invaded Ukraine final yr drove a pointy improve in international power prices, Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard stated late Thursday.
Ebrard made the feedback after taking dozens of overseas diplomats to see an enormous new photo voltaic power mission close to the U.S. border.
“Mexico is making a really great effort because it didn’t consider (the shift to renewable energy and electric vehicles) would be so fast,” Ebrard stated. The choices made by the United States and Mexico prior to now yr to take a position closely in these areas “didn’t appear so near before the war.”
“We too have to change the focus,” he stated. “It has to go faster.”
In April, Mexico plans to energy up the primary part of an enormous photo voltaic power mission close to a seaside city widespread with vacationers making the quick drive from the United States.
Once accomplished, the complete $1.6 billion mission could have a producing capability of 1,000 megawatts — sufficient to energy some 500,000 houses. It would be the largest photo voltaic mission constructed by Mexico’s state-owned electrical firm.
In Puerto Penasco, close to the highest of the Gulf of California and border with Arizona, rows of photo voltaic panels that tilt with the passing solar run off to the horizon hovering above the sand. The mission will ultimately cowl 5,000 acres within the transition the place the desert flattens between the rugged brown mountains and blue sea.
The Federal Electric Commission plans to have the primary 120 megawatts of the mission operational by April 29, Juan Antonio Fernandez, the fee’s strategic planning director, stated Thursday.
Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo, who as soon as served as a Cabinet minister alongside Ebrard earlier than operating for state workplace, made the case that Sonora ought to be the middle of Mexico’s electrical car manufacturing. In addition to the photo voltaic power coming on-line — in complete 5 gigawatts of photo voltaic capability are deliberate for the state — Sonora has the nation’s largest recognized deposits of lithium, a key element in batteries for electrical autos.
Ebrard stated the plan represented a “new model of development.”
“We’re not going to be able to do that in all of the states at the same time,” he stated. “But we have to demonstrate that that idea can be real and is not wishful thinking.”
The flip towards renewable power is at odds with different priorities of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The president has invested closely in propping up the long-struggling state-owned oil firm. He is constructing an enormous new oil refinery. And he has pushed laws that provides benefits to the state-owned electrical firm over non-public power manufacturing, which in lots of circumstances was cleaner. It is the topic of a commerce dispute with the United States and Canada.
Ebrard is certainly one of a number of folks looking for the presidential nomination of Lopez Obrador’s Morena social gathering for the 2024 nationwide elections.
