Mexico Goes Greener

Mexico to Replace Oil Power Plant With Latin America’s Largest Solar Farm

By Ari Phillips

Last week President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Mexico for what’s traditionally called the “Three Amigos” meeting. In the daylong rendezvous, energy issues were slated to play a major role, with Obama and Harper jockeying for room when it comes to the impending decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would bring dirty crude oil down from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

However, Mexico also has some major energy changes in the pipeline, and after decades of state-run oil company PEMEX having sole purview over fossil fuel extraction, international investment and companies will now be let into the mix after recent constitutional reforms. This will increase oil flows from America’s southern neighbor into those same Gulf refineries as Keystone XL might. At the same time renewable energy has started to take off in Mexico, with construction of the biggest solar power plant in Latin America, Aura Solar I—a 30-megawatt solar farm in La Paz, Mexico—the latest signal.

Latin America’s biggest solar power plant in La Paz, Mexico, could help reduce carbon emissions and pollution, as its output replaces that of dirty fossil fuel plants. Photo credit: Talli Nauman/Thomson Reuters Foundation

More at: http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/26/latin-americas-largest-solar-farm/