Mexico: Regulator publishes Preliminary Project on Clean Energy Certificates

On 7 October 2019, the National Regulatory Improvement Commission (“CONAMER”) published on its website the “Preliminary Project that modifies the Guidelines establishing the criteria for granting Clean Energy Certificates and the requirements for their acquisition” (the “Preliminary Project”), proposed by the Ministry of Energy (“SENER”).

The Preliminary Project is intended for Legacy Power Plants that were constituted before 11 August 2014 and are governed by the laws in force before the 2013 energy reform. The Legacy Power Plants will be entitled to receive clean energy certificates ("CEL"), without the need to increase their generation of clean energy. These Legacy Power Plants, as outlined in the Electricity Industry Law (“LIE”), belong exclusively to the Federal Electricity Commission (“CFE”), which will be entitled to receive CEL for a period of up to twenty years after the proposed modification is published in the Federal Official Gazette.

The objective of these changes is to allow projects to receive CEL without necessarily increasing the production of Clean Energy. The twenty-year period will begin after the publication of the energy reform package in Mexico, assuming that the source of generation for all Legacy Power Plants will be clean energies. It is also important to note that a large part of the Legacy Power Plants belong to the different subsidiary productive companies of the CFE that represent an important part of the total installed capacity in Mexico.

It is worth noting that SENER wants the Preliminary Project to be exempt from regulatory impact analysis under the terms of the Regulatory Improvement Law.