HomeLast week EWT had the opportunity to organize a breakfast event together with the British Chamber of Commerce in Mexico to talk about the future of on-site renewable energy generation in Mexico.
During the panel session, topics related to strategies of large energy consuming companies where addressed. Ignacio Castro, Director of Grupo Mexico Energía, clearly showed that the regulation in Mexico is working towards companies that want to be more sustainable. In comparison to regulation in Arizona and California regulation in Mexico is helping companies to set up renewable technologies. Grupo Mexico, an energy intensive business, identifies the market of Clean Energy Certificates (CELs) as an incentive for more small-scale projects. Currently Grupo Mexico is working with projects under ‘isolated supply’ to tackle high energy prices and environmental commitments.
Mark Jones, CEO of EWT pointed out that companies might take advantage of on-site wind energy generation to tackle those environmental commitments, high energy prices and green their image. Mark Jones presented some of the experience EWT has in other countries with similar regulations and situations in Mexico and where distributed energy for self-consumption and renewable generation projects on-site have been very successful, such as Alaska, the UK and other European countries. In the UK, Ford, one of the best-known vehicle manufacturers worldwide, installed an EWT wind turbine at the Ford Bridgend Engine Plant in Wales. Ford is committed to reduce their carbon footprint worldwide and this on-site generation has made the factory less susceptible to increases in energy costs, as well as reducing the plant’s carbon footprint.
Next to the best practices shared by Grupo Mexico and EWT, Santiago Morales, the director of Becquerel Capital, remarked that there is a great financial interest for these type of projects, and funds are being aligned to invest and finance these. In Mexico, big banks are not considering financing ‘isolated supply’ or distributed generation projects as they are much more focused on utility scale projects. Becquerel Capital is therefore now working on setting up a new scheme for investments in small scale projects.
The event was a good combination of questions from the audience translated into experience from the 4 panellists and concluded that distributed generation projects are viable and new investment models and exponential growth are expected in Mexico. The panel discussion was moderated by Enrique Cornejo, Head of International Trade at the British Embassy.
For more insights:
Live stream of Ignacio Castro, Director of Grupo Mexico Energía: https://twitter.com/BritChaMexico/status/958357784218800128
Live stream of Mark Jones, CEO EWT:
https://twitter.com/BritChaMexico/status/958360691374723073
EWT is currently helping industrial clients in Mexico to reduce their energy costs and their volatility (due to the CFE’s rate changes), through on-site wind projects. During the past year we have structured different options to facilitate these type of projects, today being able to offer options from turnkey project, projects under lease type, or a complete financing package and PPAs that do not require any investment for part of the customers. But it gives them all the benefits of a sustainable project in their operation, and provides the necessary CELs from 2018.
Contact our team in Mexico without any commitment to carry out a pre-feasibility study on your plant or operation. We will be happy to provide you with the different options that best suit your situation to implement your sustainable clean generation project on site.
