Mexico’s Electricity Consumption and it’s Sources
As a country, Mexico has lots of wind power potential. The zone of El Istmo de Tehuantepec has the potential to produce over 33,000 MW (Megawatts). In 2009, Mexico was only producing 0.13% of the world’s wind power Globally, and only 0.24% of Mexico’s total electricity was from wind power. Since then, a number of projects like this one have been put in place to increase capacity for producing energy from wind power.
As of 2020, wind power makes up 6.3% of Mexico’s electricity supply, which is a significant improvement. However, electricity consumption per capita in Mexico has been rising since 1980’s, and the total population of Mexico is still continuing to rise. Therefore, additional efforts to reduce energy consumption per capita will need to be seen to allow the overall consumption of electricity to fall.
The Oaxaca IV Wind Energy Project
This wind power project is one of three turbine sites to make up a larger project, all providing cleaner energy for Mexico. In addition to the benefit of cleaner energy, there are a number of other positive impacts that the turbines are having on the local area:
- The project has funded improved health services that has included early detection of different cancers to 1,500 local people, given workshops to 1000 young people about pregnancy and AIDS
- Funded and constructed four sports facilities and donated 1,100 pieces of exercise equipment
- Education of 1000 local students with the value and importance of nature
- Grants being offered for Masters degrees in wind energy, and a wind turbine design and production course has been generated
- Local employment has been boosted by the turbine plants
- Biodiversity has been supported through restoration of 152.8 hectares of land, animal monitoring and a vertebrate rescue programme.
The individual Oxaca IV Wind Energy Project has the ability to prevent 245,015 tonnes of CO2 from being emitted for every year that it is operational, which is expected to be 20+ years. This totals a whopping 4.9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions reduced over 20 years, which is the equivalent of 524,300 homes being powered for a year, 1,048,600 passenger vehicles being taken off the road for a year, or 1.7 million tonnes of waste being recycled instead of landfilled.