How sustainable will be the future Mexican electricity system? An environmental and socio-economic analysis of the Mexican Climate Change National Strategy in the long term

Attaining a sustainable growth and mitigating climate change are some of the main concerns in the last decades worldwide, and many national measures and policies have been designed in order to minimize the negative effects... [ view full abstract ]

Attaining a sustainable growth and mitigating climate change are some of the main concerns in the last decades worldwide, and many national measures and policies have been designed in order to minimize the negative effects over the environment and the society. One of the main sources of environmental impacts and particularly climate change impacts is the energy sector. Energy demand worldwide has increased rapidly in the last years driven by the population and economic growth in developing countries that have now access to many goods and services. Renewable energies have been seen by policy makers as an opportunity to mitigate climate change, substituting fossil energies by renewable sources. Therefore, many countries have designed energy plans that aim to cover part of the energy demand with renewable energies. Additionally, renewable energies offer other benefits that are not always taken into account, such as energy security due to their indigenous origin and socio-economic effects like economic activity increase or job creation. This work is focused on the Mexican Climate Change National Strategy (ENCC) which aims to promote the use of renewable energy sources and limit the GHG emissions by setting ambitious objectives for the next 10, 20 and 40 years. This study estimates the sustainability of the electricity system in Mexico assessing the socio-economic benefits of the implementation of the ENCC, in terms of value added and job creation, and the environmental implications in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and cumulative energy demand. Input-Output Tables and social accounts from the World Input-Output Database project have been used to create a multiregional analysis. The evolution of the Mexican electricity system in the long term under different scenarios is the result of an optimization exercise using the global energy EFDA TIMES Model (ETM). ETM provides information on the investment and operation and maintenance costs for the different technologies of the electricity system in each scenario, the installed capacity and the electricity production in each period as well as the fuel consumption of the different technologies. Results show direct and indirect environmental and socio-economic impacts of the implementation of the ENCC by technology groups, identifying those world regions and sectors that are most economically stimulated and where jobs are created. The analysis also shows the world regions and sectors that are the main contributors to climate change and energy consumption.