A wind farm in the state of Baja California, in Northwestern Mexico. This territory depends on fossil fuels for electricity generation, while the contribution of renewables is still low, but it is gradually moving towards residential solar generation. Credit: Sempra

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO, Sep 15 2025 (IPS)

Over the past four months, Mexican researcher Nicolás Velázquez has paid around US$23 for electricity, thanks to the photovoltaic system installed in his home in the northern city of Mexicali.

“You can see the direct benefit. My neighbor received a bill over US$400. The problem is the high temperatures, which double demand” from March to August, said Velázquez, coordinator of the  Center for Renewable Energy Studies at the Engineering Institute of the public Autonomous University of Baja California.

Due to the high temperatures in cities such as Mexicali, capital of the northwestern state of Baja California, people need air conditioning systems during the summer, which increases electricity consumption in a state with 3.77 million inhabitants, affected by a shortage of infrastructure and generation.“Distributed generation is better for us. It is done by Mexican companies. We import the technology, but there is a chain of Mexican participation. We participate from engineering onwards, activating the economy to a certain level, helping the residential sector”–Nicolás Velázquez.

In late August, residents of several neighborhoods in Mexicali blocked the highway between that city and neighboring Tijuana due to a lack of electricity.

In an attempt to alleviate the situation, the Mexican government launched the Techos Solares del Bienestar (Solar Roofs for Welfare) program in March, aimed at low-income homeowners who pay high rates and consume between 400 and 1,000 kilowatt hours between July and August, so they receive solar panels for their homes in Mexicali and the neighboring municipality of San Felipe.

It is one of the steps to relaunch the energy transition to less polluting sources that the previous government halted in 2018.

The initial plan is to install solar panels in 5,500 homes in Mexicali with an investment of around US$10 million. The ultimate goal is to cover 150,000 homes by 2030. The scheme promises to reduce electricity bills from 49% to 89%.

For Velázquez, the central question revolves around the advisability of resorting to centralized or distributed generation, which consists of electricity production by systems of many small generation sources close to the end consumer.

“Distributed generation is better for us. It is done by Mexican companies. We import the technology, but there is a chain of Mexican participation. We participate from engineering onwards, activating the economy to a certain level, helping the residential sector,” he said from Mexicali.

In his opinion, “there has to be a balance between centralized and distributed generation, because there will not be a single solution. More energy justice is achieved through distributed generation.”

In Mexico, home to some 129 million people, there are at least 12,000 communities without electricity and some 9,000 homes without connection to the national grid, a quarter of which are located in Mexicali, which had 1.05 million inhabitants according to the 2020 census.

Small-scale or distributed generation is on the rise in the country.

Since 2007, the government’s Energy Regulatory Commission has authorized 518,019 licenses for a distributed energy generation capacity of 4,497 megawatts (MW). In 2024, it approved 106,934 interconnections for 1,086 MW.

The western state of Jalisco and the northern states of Nuevo León and Chihuahua top the list, while Baja California ranks 14th among the 32 Mexican states.

In July, the government’s National Energy Commission updated the regulations for interconnected self-consumption for installations between 0.7 and 20 MW, which expands the margin for distributed generation, also known as citizen generation.

Solar panels in a community in the municipality of Ensenada, in the northwestern state of Baja California. The existing microgrid in that town provides electricity to the small community. Credit: Secihti

More promises

The energy policy of president Claudia Sheinbaum, in office since October 1, has so far been marked more by proposals than by concrete actions, and Baja California is no exception to this dynamic.

Her government will allocate US$12.3 billion for electricity generation, US$7.5 billion for transmission infrastructure, and US$3.6 billion for decentralized photovoltaic production in homes.

The plan would add 21,893 MW to the national energy matrix, reaching 37.8% clean energy from the current 22.5%, so that the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) would hold 54% of the market, with the rest going to private and individual entities.

On August 26, the president announced the construction of two solar thermal plants in the state of Baja California Sur, which shares a peninsula with Baja California, with a public investment of US$800 million to generate more than 100 MW. The territory is also isolated from the national grid and suffers from a chronic energy deficit.

Solar thermal energy converts solar radiation into electricity using mirrors to generate steam and drive turbines, as well as enabling energy storage.

The CFE plans to tender phase II of the Puerto Peñasco photovoltaic plant, in the town of the same name in the northern state of Sonora, with a capacity of 300 MW and 10.3 MW of battery backup. The first 120 MW phase of this facility has been operating since 2023. Completed in 2026, it will contribute 1,000 MW at a cost of US$1.6 billion.

However, the Mexican government continues to promote fossil fuels, despite the urgency of phasing them out, as it seeks to strengthen the CFE and the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos.

All of this impacts places such as Baja California, where 16 public and private power plants operate, with an installed capacity of 3,461 MW, including three wind farms with more than 300 MW of capacity and three solar farms with 50 MW.

The private company Sempra Infraestructura, a subsidiary of the US company Sempra, is building a wind farm with a capacity of 300 MW, which is expected to be operational in 2026. In addition, CFE operates a 340 MW geothermal plant.

Despite its shortcomings, the state exports around 1,100 MW to the neighboring US state of California and imports around 400 MW. Baja California could produce 6,550 MW of solar power, 3,495 MW of wind power, and 2,000 MW of geothermal power.

In addition, CFE is building two combined-cycle power plants in Baja California that burn gas and generate steam to drive turbines, which would reduce blackouts.

The country faces insufficient production to meet annual demand growth of about 4% and an obsolete power grid.

In the first half of 2025, the country generated 310.49 terawatt-hours, virtually the same as during the same period last year. Some sources, such as gas, hydroelectric, wind, and photovoltaic, increased, but others, such as thermoelectric and nuclear, decreased.

In Mexico, electricity generation depends mainly on fossil gas, followed by hydroelectricity and nuclear energy. Renewable sources have a capacity of 33,517 MW, but only contribute one-fifth of the electricity produced.

Energy map of the northern Mexican state of Baja California. Electricity generation is not enough to meet growing demand, causing frequent blackouts. Credit: Government of Baja California

New schemes

Baja California’s 2022-2027 Energy Program consists of four strategies, including providing access to electricity to remote communities and unregulated housing, as well as promoting the rapid transition to decarbonization and the use of clean energies.

In addition, it envisions eight outcomes, including the promotion of two annual microgrid power generation projects for isolated communities and a 3% increase in alternative electricity generation. However, there is no evidence of progress toward these goals.

If it so desired, the Mexican government could transform its national electricity subsidy of more than US$5 billion annually into distributed generation.

The Universal Electricity Service Fund is a case in point. Intended to cover marginalized communities, available data indicate that it has covered more than 1,000 municipalities out of a total of 2,469, including two in Baja California, since 2019.

Velázquez proposed that these funds could finance solar panels and microgrids.

“Year after year, they give a subsidy, but if these families were provided with a photovoltaic system, it would solve the problem at its root. We need to look for more far-reaching measures; the actions have to be different,” he said.

In December 2023, during the climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Mexico joined the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge, which consists of tripling alternative installed capacity and doubling the energy efficiency rate by 2030. In comparison, Sheinbaum’s plans fall short.

This projected desalination plant in Los Cabos, whose construction received final approval in October 2020, will have a capacity to purify 250 litres of water per second and its cost will exceed 55 million dollars, according to figures from the Baja California Sur state government. CREDIT: Government of Baja California Sur

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jan 31 2021 (IPS)

Mexico is seeking to mitigate water shortages in part of its extensive territory by resorting to seawater, through the expansion of desalination plants. But this solution has exorbitant costs and significant environmental impacts.

Among the advantages of these water treatment plants, Gabriela Muñoz, a researcher at the public university El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, highlighted the expansion of water sources and the production of water for human consumption.

But in her conversation with IPS, she also underlined the disadvantages of these plants, such as high energy requirements, aggravated if the energy comes from fossil sources; high costs; and the generation of brine and wastewater."Before considering desalination, measures such as water saving, investment in green infrastructure, rainwater harvesting and the reuse of treated water should be a priority. We must also compare the costs of building desalination plants versus alternatives.” -- Gabriela Muñoz

To illustrate the costs: one of the desalination plants authorised in 2014 by the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) in the northern state of Baja California cost some 35 million dollars to process 250 litres per second (l/s). Another plant with the same capacity, given final approval in October 2020 in the neighbouring state of Baja California Sur, will require an investment of more than 55 million dollars.

In Mexico “there are no regulations regarding how to dispose of the brine. The most common thing to do is to dump it on the beach. We have to be careful how we handle the brine because of the toxicity to ecosystems. Nor is there installed capacity to treat all the wastewater. For specific areas, desalination should not be the first option,” said Muñoz from the northern border city of Tijuana.

Between 2012 and 2020, environmental authorities authorised at least 120 desalination facilities, rejected six applications and another five are under evaluation, according to data obtained by IPS through public information requests. Most of the new projects are located in three states with acute water shortages: the northwestern states of Baja California and Baja California Sur, and the southeastern state of Quintana Roo.

However, in Mexico, where more than 400 such plants operate, there has been no research on their ecological effects, as corroborated by IPS, with the exception of the study “Desalination of water”, published in 2000 by the government’s Mexican Water Institute.

One basic desalination technique is thermal distillation, in which seawater is heated until it evaporates, the vapor condenses to form freshwater, and the remaining liquid is discarded as concentrated brine.

Another is reverse osmosis, in which water is filtered and then pumped at high pressure through thin membranes that only allow the liquid to pass through and retain the salt.

Global context

In 2019, the study “The State of Desalination and Brine Production: A Global Outlook”, produced by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, based in Ontario, Canada, warned of the growing generation of brine and its serious effects on the environment. The process of extracting brine, it estimated, accumulated a total of 142 million cubic metres (m3) of waste worldwide that year.

There are 18,214 desalination plants around the world, with an installed capacity of 89 million m3 per day, serving more than 300 million people, according to the latest data from the International Desalination Association. For every litre of water desalinated, a litre of brine is produced.

These plants are part of a trend towards the introduction of this technology in areas facing the threat of water stress or scarcity.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (C) visited Los Cabos, on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula at the northwestern tip of Mexico, in August, where he confirmed the construction of the larger of two new desalination plants in the state of Baja California Sur. Mexico already has 400 seawater treatment plants, but experts warn about the excessive costs and environmental impacts. CREDIT: Government of Baja California Sur

Water availability in Mexico

Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, has an area of 1.96 million square kilometres, 67 percent of which is arid and semi-arid land.

According to CONAGUA, water availability varies widely in this country of 129 million people, as it is scarce in the north and abundant in the south.

Of every 100 litres of rainfall, 72 return to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration, 22 run off into rivers and streams, and six feed 653 aquifers, of which 108 were overexploited, 32 had saline soils or brackish water, and 18 had seawater infiltration due to rising sea levels and seepage into the water table.

Although Mexico had a low national water stress level in 2017 – 19.5 percent – its risk of water stress is high, according to the Aqueduct platform, developed by the Aqueduct Alliance, made up of governments, companies and foundations.

In fact, Mexico is the second most water-stressed country in the Americas, after Chile. Water stress could be a problem by 2040 from the centre to the north of the country.

Meanwhile, the extreme northwest presents a medium-high risk of aquifer depletion and practically the entire Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea present a medium-high risk of drought, precisely where most of the desalination plants are located.

Aqueduct takes into account 13 indicators of water stress, such as groundwater availability and depletion.

In the last five months, drought has worsened in Mexico – the third worst record of the century – a consequence of the climate crisis, according to data from the National Meteorological Service.

In Mexico water use is intense, reflected in its water footprint – the impact of human activities on water – of 1,978 m3/person per year, compared to a global average of 1,385.

As a result, national and regional authorities have set their sights on seawater, given that Mexico is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and there are a total of 150 municipalities with a coastline, out of a total of 2,466, according to the National Policy on Mexico’s Seas and Coasts.

This screenshot from a video by the Baja California Sur government in northwestern Mexico shows the site of the new desalination plant to be built in Los Cabos, next to the sea, including details of the different processes used to make the water from the Pacific Ocean fit for human consumption. CREDIT: IPS

Scalable model

This year, Héctor Aviña, an academic at the Engineering Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, plans to scale up his prototype geothermal-powered desalination plant in the city of Los Cabos, located in Baja California Sur, some 1,650 kilometres northwest of Mexico City.

“I don’t know if it is the best option because of brine generation and well exploitation, but it is a good alternative. Many areas are already experiencing water stress. In those places, desalination and beach wells can help aquifers recover,” Aviña told IPS from Mexico City.

The 500,000 dollar plan consists of upgrading a pilot plant from the current capacity of four m3 per day to 40 m3 and, if possible, to 400 m3, in an initiative to be developed with the state-owned Mexican Centre for Innovation in Geothermal Energy.

The project will take advantage of nearby hot water wells to obtain water and geothermal energy.

With this technology, the cost per m3 of water ranges from 0.8 to 1.3 dollars, compared to 0.6 to 1.00 dollars using reverse osmosis.

The National Infrastructure Investment Agreement, signed between the federal government and members of the business community in November 2020, includes the foundations for four desalination plants in Baja California, Baja California Sur and Sonora, with an investment of 643 million dollars and a capacity of 650 l/s.

But Muñoz suggested that before turning to desalination, poor irrigation practices, leaks and aging infrastructure should be addressed.

“Before considering desalination, measures such as water saving, investment in green infrastructure, rainwater harvesting and the reuse of treated water should be a priority. We must also compare the costs of building desalination plants versus alternatives,” she said.

In 2014 Aviña designed a reverse osmosis model equipped with solar panels and batteries, which has competitive costs.

“In other areas, the source of energy must be reviewed. Mexico is going to have water problems, it is a situation that we will have to live with. If we study it well, if we manage it well, desalination is a good alternative,” he argued.

The Zanjón, the nucleus of the Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Río Colorado Biosphere Reserve in northwest Mexico, where the Cocopah have fished for a living for centuries. The restrictions on fishing condemn them to extinction. Credit: Courtesy of Prometeo Lucero

By Daniela Pastrana
EL MAYOR, Mexico , Sep 8 2014 (IPS)

In their language, Cocopah means “river people”. For over 500 years the members of this Amerindian group have lived along the lower Colorado River and delta in the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonora and the U.S. state of Arizona.

They fish and make crafts for a living, have strong family ties, and are united by their Kurikuri or rituals and funeral ceremonies – and, now, by the struggle to keep from disappearing, in a battle led by their women. Today, the Cocopah number just over 1,300 people, most of whom live in Arizona.

“I’m Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela. I’m a fisherwoman. And I am Cocopah,” says the president of the Cocopah Indigenous People Cooperative Society.

She and other women of this community introduce themselves this way at an assembly attended by IPS, held to discuss the federal government’s promise to finally consult them about a fishing ban which took away their livelihood and practically condemns them to extinction.“The case of the Cocopah is an example of how ultra-conservationist policies can endanger the existence of a native community.” -- Lawyer Yacotzin Bravo

“No government has the right to take our habitat from us,” Hurtado told IPS during a visit to the El Mayor Cocopah Indigenous Community, where the Red de Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists on Foot Network) and the Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights are carrying out a project for the protection of human rights defenders, financed by the European Union.

In May, the 61-year-old Hurtado, a mother of four and grandmother of 10, sat down on the road connecting the port of San Felipe on the Gulf of California with Mexicali, the capital of the state of Baja California, which abuts the U.S., and refused to budge until the federal government formalised its promise to hold a consultation with the local communities.

“The government agreed to do something that it should have done 25 years ago,” said the lawyer Ricardo Rivera de la Torre of the Citizens Commission of Human Rights of the Northwest, an organisation that has been documenting violations of civil rights in Baja California since 2004.

Rivera de la Torre and Raúl Ramírez Baena took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2008.

“The government violated the Cocopah’s people’s right to consultation as outlined in the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169,” which Mexico ratified in 1990, said Ramírez Baena.

ILO Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples requires prior consultation of local indigenous communities before any project is authorised on their land.

But in 1993, without any prior consultation, the government decreed the creation of the Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Río Colorado Biosphere Reserve. The nucleus of the reserve is the Zanjón, where the Cocopah have fished for the Gulf weakfish (Cynoscion othonopterus) for centuries.

The Gulf weakfish lay their eggs between February and May in shallow waters in the Gulf of California where the states of Sonora and Baja California meet, and the fish are widely sold during Lent, when Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays.

After the biosphere reserve was created, a Reserve Management Plan was adopted in 1995, along with a string of laws and regulations – such as the Law on Ecological Balance and a fishing quota and ban – which restricted the fishing activities of the Cocopah to levels that have made it impossible for them to make a living.

“The case of the Cocopah is an example of how ultra-conservationist policies can endanger the existence of a native community,” said Yacotzin Bravo, another lawyer with the Citizens Commission of Human Rights of the Northwest.

A group of Cocopah women in the Indiviso ejido, in the El Mayor Cocopah Indigenous Community in the Mexican state of Baja California, during an assembly where they discussed how to carry out a consultation on reforming the regulations and laws that limit their fishing in the biosphere reserve. Credit: Courtesy of Prometeo Lucero

The Mexican constitution defines indigenous people as the descendants of the populations that inhabited the area before the state was formed and who preserve their ancestral cultural or economic institutions.

Article 2 of the constitution establishes that native people have “preferential access” to the nation’s natural assets.

“Indigenous rights are the rights of peoples,” expert in indigenous law Francisco López Bárcenas told IPS. “Not of persons, not of municipalities, not of rural communities. With respect to indigenous rights, we are talking about the appropriation of territory, which is necessary for a people to be able to exist as such.

“They depend for a living on fishing, on a close relationship with their natural surroundings. It’s not only about money. First, as a result of the laws on agriculture, their territories were shrunk to small spaces, and now their main livelihood activity is reduced. And if they can’t fish, they have to go to other parts to find work,” he said.

Every year, just after the waning moon, the weakfish begin their migration to the shallow waters of the Colorado River delta, and fishing season starts.

The Cocopah go to sea in their “pangas” or fishing boats and sit quietly until they hear the weakfish and throw their “chinchorros” or nets. The Cocopah capture between 200 and 500 tons of fish per season.

“What the government has done with us is segregation,” Juana Aguilar González, the president of the El Mayor Cocopah Rural Production Society, told Tierramérica. “They know that we Indians don’t threaten the environment.”

The Cocopah are not the only ones who catch weakfish. There are also two non-indigenous cooperatives in the area – San Felipe in Baja California and Santa Clara in Sonora – with a fishing capacity 10 times greater, according to statistics from the governmental National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO).

The weakfish “captured by the Cocopah are approximately 10 percent of the recommended quota, which shows that the fishing done by that indigenous community, even if they fish in the nucleus of the reserve, does not hurt the ecological balance or threaten the species with extinction,” says recommendation 8/2002 of the National Human Rights Commission addressed to the ministries of the environment and agriculture.

“The decree creating the reserve changed our lives,” Mónica González, the daughter of the late Cocopah governor Onésimo González, said sadly. “Now, instead of being busy organising our dances, we have to be worried about the legal action, the trials, confiscations and arrests.”

The Cocopah, descendants of the Yumano people, are one of the five surviving indigenous groups in Baja California.

In the 17th century, some 22,000 Cocopah were living in the Colorado River delta. Today there are only 1,000 in the Cocopah Indian Reservation in the southwest corner of Arizona, and just over 300 in Mexico, in Baja California and Sonora, according to the governmental National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) , Cocopah is an endangered language. There are only 10 Cocopah speakers still alive. Years ago one of them, 44-year- old Mónica González, began to make an effort to revive the language.

“Sometimes I think our leaders talk about the Cocopah as if we had already died, but we are alive and still putting up a struggle,” she told IPS.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.