However, in April 2022, he could not win the two-thirds congressional majority required to approve the reforms, as private interest groups lobbied against the plan. 12 Proposed reforms included the cancellation of contracts with private energy generators and increasing the share of energy generation contracts reserved for CFE from 38 per cent to 54 per cent. In September 2021, AMLO introduced a plan to annul the 2013 energy reforms, undoing energy liberalisation and increasing energy sovereignty. 11 CFE and PEMEX (the Mexican state-owned petroleum company founded in 1938), which were considered strategic entities with a social orientation prior to the liberalisation of the energy sector, have been turned into for-profit state-owned entities.Įlected in 2018 on the promise of decreasing Mexico’s dependency on foreign imports and improving social and economic well-being, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known by his initials AMLO) of left-wing party Morena took on the task of reversing the country’s energy privatisation. 10 As a consequence of the reforms, electricity prices increased by 35 per cent between 20. 9 An independent operator, the National Center for Energy Control (CENACE), was introduced to coordinate a marketised energy sector, where private companies and CFE compete to generate and sell power. Since then, CFE has been hollowed out, its functions reduced to that of an administrative entity, with private corporations now owning and controlling energy generation. 8 In effect, this pushed Mexican energy policies back to pre-nationalisation days, making it possible for private companies to extract and handle resources on behalf of the State, to generate energy and sell it to CFE, and to own and invest in renewable energy projects.

Between 20, Peña Nieto’s administration made 20 legislative changes and three constitutional amendments that opened the Mexican energy market to private companies, both national and foreign. In 2013, President Peña Nieto made another attempt at privatisation, this time amending the constitution to promote private sector participation in the energy market. However, both attempts failed and, as required by the constitution, the electricity sector remained federally owned, with CFE in control. Further attempts at unbundling the energy sector were made in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the goal of rebranding energy as a commercial rather than a public service and allowing independent power producers to sell directly to industrial customers and CFE under long-term contracts. The law remained heavily debated for a decade and in 2002, the Mexican Supreme Court eventually ruled that it may have been unconstitutional, though no clear-cut ruling was presented. In 1992, a law was passed allowing the participation of private corporations in energy generation. 7 Between 19, essential sectors were privatised, such as the telecommunications sector, with the sale of Telmex for US$6 billion in 1990. With the growing popularity of neoliberalism and large-scale privatisations in many countries, Mexican politicians began to adopt a similar mentality in the 1990s. 5 As of 2020, according to official documents, access to electricity in Mexico was as high as 99.1 per cent - although this figure is challenged by civil society organisations. 4 By 1992, CFE achieved an electrification rate of over 93 per cent. The nationalisation effectively created a monopoly on electricity for CFE and ended a decade-long dispute over foreign-owned electric power firms that controlled nearly 70 per cent of the market. In 1960, the electricity industry was nationalised, giving the government exclusive responsibility for electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. CFE’s main tasks were the generation and distribution of electricity to Mexican households. In 1937, the federal electricity commission (CFE), a state-owned and state-financed enterprise, were created.

3 Under the leadership of the social democratic PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), the energy sector was first reorganised in the 1930s. After the Mexican Revolution, the new Mexican Constitution (1917) stipulated that ownership of natural resources such as land and water would be granted to the Mexican State, making way for comprehensive nationalisations throughout the 1930s. Over the past 90 years, Mexico’s energy sector has experienced substantial transformation.

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