Wind Energy and the Energy Transition: Challenges and Opportunities for Mexico

Abstract

We present a review of wind energy development in Mexico, factors hampering this development, and proposals for solutions to address this hampering. This review is relevant in the context of climate change mitigation strategies and the achievement of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Wind energy can be harvested at competitive costs to solve society’s energy poverty and climate change problems. Firstly, we present the current wind energy installed capacity and wind power generation status globally and in Mexico and discuss why Mexico is lagging behind, particularly since 2020. Despite this lag, several state governors are still considering wind energy developments. The current economic context is then considered, with community wind energy as a solution forward for wind energy development, using a successful case study from the UK that has addressed energy poverty and provided an additional income source for an island community. Any community energy project using wind as its main energy resource relies on accurate wind energy assessment in its feasibility analysis. Thus, an evaluation of different wind energy atlases for Mexico was performed, which showed that models considering microscale processes could lead to a relative difference of more than 50% when compared to those that do not consider them. This led to the conclusion that microscale effects must be considered in wind energy characterization models. Furthermore, it is acknowledged that wind faces other challenges, such as the effect of future climate change scenarios, grid planning, and vulnerability and risk associated with tropical storms, which can be substantial in Mexico. Solutions are proposed in the form of possible wind power generation scenarios, planning and implementation of centralized and distributed transmission lines, and possible wind siting and technological choices to reduce the vulnerability and risk to tropical storms. Finally, we close with some future perspectives for researchers and decision-makers. The main conclusions are that sustainable growth can only be compatible with a transition to renewable sources of energy, energy community projects can address energy poverty and achieve sustainable development goals, wind energy feasibility studies need to include microscale effects, return of investment can be improved by siting the wind farms in regions of low vulnerability and risk to extreme events, and high-voltage transmission lines are crucial for sustainable development, even with the important role that distributed systems play. Finally, turbine growth and materials recycling, among other factors, must be considered when assessing the environmental impacts of wind farm decommissioning.