Mexico

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has published a report looking at the human rights due diligence performance of the renewables industry and examined individual generation methods. The report finds that, while the solar sector is not top of the sad list, its vest also isn’t completely unstained.

In the first part of pv magazine‘s series on solar’s hidden champion markets, we take a look at Mexico. The country currently has 4 GW of total installed PV capacity, and overtook Chile as Latin America’s largest solar market by the end of 2018. But the cancellation of auctions and other negative signals from government could put a damper on things moving forward.

The Chinese lithium-ion battery producer has taken significant stakes in two U.K. entities associated with a mine which could hold up to 8.8 million tons of the raw material in clay deposits.

Although it is unclear how much generation capacity will be contracted, several projects submitted for the subsequently cancelled fourth government renewables auction may participate in Thursday’s procurement. ‘Qualified users’ – energy consumers needing more than 1 MW of power and without access to regulated power supply from national utility CFE – are expected to be among the buyers at the exercise.

Of the nation’s installed operational PV capacity, 3,364 MW is in the form of solar parks while distributed generation contributes around 693 MW.

“Another week, another trade crisis.”

With figures at the end of last year boosted by profitable PV project sales, the manufacturer and developer is now nursing unflattering comparisons and aims to get more projects built and sold by the end of next month.

With clean energy being generated at lower and lower prices around the world, solar power is playing a leading role in bringing the curtain down on coal, and will help the decarbonization of transport and space heating too.

Zodiac Aerospace Equipo de Mexico has agreed to buy solar power from a 13 MW slice of the 80 MW Los Santos Solar II project in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

While the world’s biggest solar manufacturers are confident there are plenty of alternative markets for a rising volume of panel exports, the message spelled out by first-quarter shipment figures is that protectionism works.