The Energy electrical It allows to light five out of every 10 light bulbs in the country on a daily basis.
Through schemes allowed by the public service law on the matter, independent producers, self-sufferers, cogenerators and small producers, among the most important, large companies, as well as generation and consumption companies contribute 45.8% of the electricity available in the national territory.
These are firms that expanded from the changes to these regulations and that, with the opening of the sector, gained space and took clients away from the company. Federal electricity commission (CFE), arguing that it offered expensive.
In 2000, according to the agency’s annual report, when it was led by Alfredo Elías Ayub, “personal” attention was given to 10,500 companies considered large clients, such as Compañía Minera Autlán, Mexicana de Cobre, Altos Hornos de México, Cementos Apasco, Bimbo and Peñoles.
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For 2018, the year in which the last available report is recorded, reference is made to 1,141 large firms.
To explain the reasons for the drop in CFE’s income in some interim periods, a recurring argument in its annual reports is: “the increase (…) in self-sufficiency”, due to the formation of companies of huge private firms.
The first
The disbandment of these clients has been a constant since 1994, when the first self-supply permit was granted to Minera Hecla, authorized by Georgina Kessel, then president of the Energy regulatory commission (CRE), and who later served as secretary in the field with former President Felipe Calderón.
For May 2006, the same benefit was guaranteed to Termoeléctrica del Golfo, which would keep part of the energy generated and the highest percentage would be delivered to Cementos Mexicanos (Cemex), which in turn would receive the service through the CFE transmission network. That was one of the first major clients to lose the organ.
With the passage of time, other large self-supply companies were created with the participation of Telmex, Bimbo, Cemex, Soriana, Chedraui, Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, Celanese, Oxxo, CitiBanamex, Banco Azteca, as well as TV Azteca, Hyundai, KIA, Ford, Nissan Mexicana, Suburban Train, Grupo Elektra, BBVA, PepsiCo, Costco, Sonoco, Comercial Mexicana and Walmart, among others, something that the CFE described a few weeks ago as a “black market for electricity”.
Ternium, Cementos Apasco, Minera Autlán, Kimberly Clark, Mexichem (Orbia), BASF, Conductores Monterrey, Vidriera Monterrey, Alestra, Fábrica Monterrey, Bayer de México, Deacero and Tec de Monterrey joined the list.
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Tubacero, Banca Afirme, Vitro, Continental, Corning, Sanborns, Evenflo, Gamesa, LG, Mabe, Maizoro, Sabritas, Salinas Industrial, Polioles, as well as Sigma Alimentos were also added.
Even the records of the federal commission refer that many of them are partners of more than one licensee, such as the Spanish Iberdrola, which concentrated large companies on different permits with self-sufficiency plants.
The arrival of the Iberian firm on the market, by the Calderón government and the then Secretary of the Interior, Juan Camilo Mouriño, allowed the E / 205 / AUT / 2002, E / 1055 / AUT / 2013 and E / 1523 / AUT / 2015 permits to bring together up to 586 members, some of them with a presence in the three authorizations, such as Cementos Apasco, Kimberly Clark, Nissan Mexicana, Cervecería Cuauhtémoc and Mexichem, to name a few examples.
Current panorama
Currently, according to the draft of the Energy Sector Plan 2020-2024, the participation of private companies in the National Electric System (ITS) includes 255 self-sufficers, small production, export and import, which generated 45.8 terawatt hours (TWh), which represents 14% of consumption throughout the territory; Iberdrola was one of the dominant ones.
On this generation scheme, the so-called independent producers predominate (PEE), which emerged in 1995, known as long-term productive infrastructure projects.
Under this financing model, companies from different parts of the world, mainly Spanish, dedicated to building power plants came to Mexico, in order to exclusively sell the service produced to CFE, providing them with land, plant construction, as well as their interconnection to the grid. .
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In this case, the commission is obliged by contract to buy, supply and transport gas from 13 of the 33 PEE plants, assuming all the risks of operation and reliability. These firms and the plants have the CFE committed until 2039, when the agreements for the acquisition are concluded.
The contractual commitments that were signed at the time contemplated the purchase of electrical energy at a combined total cost of 2 billion 761 thousand 604 million pesos, of which 886 thousand 778 million pesos would be being paid until this year. A total of one trillion 874 billion pesos remains to be covered in the following 19 years.
Iberdrola, for example, operates eight combined cycle PEE plants, for which the CFE committed the purchase of the service with a total value of one billion 164 billion pesos, equivalent to 46% of the total committed by the agency in the 33 plants PEE. After 2023, it would be necessary to pay 902 thousand 437 million pesos.
For this reason, the federal government considers in the draft of the Energy Sector Plan 2020-2024 to be tied to private generators for the next 19 years, a period in which the validity of the legacy contracts ends, because if the conditions are not modified of those agreements, there will be losses of 160 billion pesos in that period.
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