Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has consistently criticized the 2013 reform that opened the Mexican energy sector to private investment, and renewable power generation has been no exception. In a presentation at the Wilson Center, Lisa Viscidi explained how the reform benefited renewable energy by opening the wholesale power market to private investment and establishing competitive auctions that have proven highly successful, as well as creating policies specifically designed to boost clean energy such as a cap-and-trade program. However, AMLO’s skepticism of private investment, the cancellation of generation and transmission auctions, and the return to state-led electricity development through bolstering of the CFE threaten to squander Mexico’s renewable potential and drag its clean development efforts backwards.
Viscidi’s recommendations for Mexico’s renewables sector, which she also presented at the event, were published by the Wilson Center last year as a book chapter entitled “Mexico’s Renewable Energy Future.”
