Mexico announces US$23bn investment in electricity infrastructure

The Mexican government has presented the National Strategy for the Electricity Sector 2024-2030, intending to invest US$23bn in the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). The plan has four central axes: strengthening the planning of the domestic electricity sector, improving energy justice, guaranteeing a reliable grid, and establishing clear rules to ensure and increase private investment in the sector. To do so, the strategy plans to expand the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and private companies’ infrastructure, while aiming to keep stable prices, and to universalize access to electricity through on-site generation projects.

The CFE’s investment plan for this period consists of US$23.4bn, of which US$12.3bn correspond to new generation projects (13,024 MW), US$7.5bn to transmission infrastructure and US$3.6bn to distribution projects. For private companies, the plan considers three ways to participate in the domestic energy market: through long-term contracts that may be tendered, by partnering with the CFE in projects that that will be tendered (where the state-owned company will hold at least a 54% share), and by complying with the plan’s reliability and backup requirements to generate and use the market to sell their energy. 

At the end of 2023, Mexico had a total installed capacity of 90.6 GW, consisting of 29.4 GW of gas, 22 GW of oil, 12.6 GW of hydro, 10.6 GW of solar, 6.9 GW of wind, 5.5 GW of coal, 1.6 GW of nuclear, 1 GW of biomass, and 1 GW of geothermal.