Acciona sells renewable energy certificates to unit of Mexico’s CFE

Acciona Energía México, the Mexican unit of Spanish renewable energy company Acciona has signed two contracts to sell renewable energy certificates (Certificados de Energía Limpia – CELs) to CFE Calificados, a subsidiary of Mexican utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) specializing in power sale to large users.

One of the two contracts is linked to the production of the solar plant Puerto Libertad, which is located in the state of Sonora, in the north of the country. Under this contract, Acciona will sell 49,500 CELs annually to CFE Calificados over a 20-year period. A second contract, linked to a wind power plant owned by Acciona in Tamaulipas, is for the sale of 5,000 CELs per year.

Acciona specified that a CEL equals the production of 1 MWh of power from renewable energy sources.

The solar park Puerto Libertad was built by Acciona in partnership with local company Biofields. The plant has a capacity of 227 MW, but the company announced it February it will be expanded by another 112 MW. For the first section of the plant Acciona secured a PPA with the CFE in the power auction held in September 2016. The energy produced by the second section of the project will instead be sold to the facilities of an important but unnamed Mexican industrial group.

Work on the second phase of the project is expected to start in the fourth quarter of this year, with completion scheduled for the first half of 2019.

With Mexico’s Energy Reform, clean energy requirements have been introduced for both suppliers and large consumers, starting in 2018 with a requirement of 5%. In 2019 the quota will rise to 5.8%. In April, the Mexican government has published requirements for the clean energy certificates (Certificados de Energías Limpias – CEL) for the period 2020-2022. The new requirements are intended to facilitate the planning of renewable energy projects over the coming years.

Under the new requirements, the Mexican Government intends to increase the percentage of clean energy certificates covering the purchase of power by local power providers and industrial customers to 7.4% in 2020, 10.9% in 2021 and 13.9% in 2022.