With the growth of nearshoring , the transition to clean energy has ceased to be merely an environmental commitment and has become a competitive advantage for Mexican industrial parks . For companies seeking to integrate into global supply chains, renewable energy is now a requirement that influences investment attraction.
In an interview with T21, Juan Pablo López Greenham, CEO of Bioenergy Renewable Energies , explained that the progress of relocating production lines in Mexico is increasing the demand for energy infrastructure with lower carbon emissions , reliable supply and competitive costs.
“Companies coming to Mexico demand quality energy at a good price, and that it be clean. Today there is a traceability system that already measures how you manufacture, how you transport, and what the environmental impact is of the entire supply chain,” he explained.
The executive pointed out that one of the main challenges for the country is not only to increase electricity generation, but also to strengthen transmission lines to respond to industrial growth, especially in the corridor that runs from the Bajío region to the northern border, where a large part of the projects associated with nearshoring and logistics are concentrated.
According to the Mexican Association of Private Industrial Parks (AMPIP) , the 477 parks currently operating in the country require an installed capacity of 17,708 megawatts (MW) , while the 103 parks under construction will demand another 3,456 MW between 2026 and 2029.
The recent expansion of the distributed generation scheme, which allows self-consumption projects of up to 20 MW, opens up new opportunities for industrial parks to produce a greater proportion of their own electricity without being entirely dependent on the national grid.
López Greenham argued that this regulatory change will usher in a new era for industrial photovoltaic installations, particularly on the roofs of warehouses, parking lots, and hybrid systems that combine solar panels, battery storage, and natural gas generation.
The Electricity Sector Law , published in the Official Gazette of the Federation in March 2025, raised the limit for distributed generation without the need for a permit from 500 to 700 kilowatts (kW) and introduced the interconnected self-consumption scheme for projects between 0.7 and 20 MW. The National Energy Commission (CNE) formalized the requirements for this latter scheme, which in practice multiplies the scale of the projects that companies can install within their plants.
This leap, the specialist indicated, comes with a technical requirement: larger capacity projects must incorporate Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS ), equivalent to 30% of their installed capacity with three hours of backup power, to avoid intermittent outages on the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) grid . This same storage, he added, allows plants to reduce peak shaving —the spike in consumption that occurs when engines start—and adjust their billing by charging energy during off-peak hours and discharging it during peak hours.
As an example of what is already being done in the country, the executive detailed the installation that the company made for BorgWarner in El Salto, Jalisco, which consisted of a waterproof photovoltaic solar roof that replaced industrial sheets with modules that generate energy, allow the passage of natural light and have a useful life of several decades, which helps to reduce the operating costs of the companies.
The areas with the highest penetration of this type of energy are Santa Catarina, Guadalupe, Apodaca, Monterrey and Chihuahua, in addition to Querétaro, Aguascalientes and Guanajuato , where investment has been mainly in photovoltaic solar systems under the distributed generation scheme.
Regarding the energy already generated, he clarified that the electricity produced, for example, in a solar park in Sonora, does not physically travel to a plant in Guadalajara. It is fed into the national grid and consumed locally, while the CFE charges a wheeling fee for the use of its transmission infrastructure, regardless of the distance.
It is precisely the state of that network that López Greenham identifies as the main bottleneck preventing more industrial parks from integrating hybrid clean energy schemes .
According to the executive, the adoption of renewable energy in industrial parks is still in its early stages, despite the progress made in recent years. However, he believes that the adoption of renewables within industrial parks will grow over the next five years, provided two outstanding issues are resolved: more accessible financing schemes —such as leasing, loans, or PPAs (power purchase agreements, generally for renewable energy, between a producer and a buyer) without direct investment from companies—and more streamlined interconnection procedures with the CFE (Federal Electricity Commission) and the CNE (National Energy Commission).
According to the Electricity Sector Development Plan (Pladese) 2025-2039, the country will add 19,954 MW in renewables and 5,000 MW in storage by 2030.
58% of that capacity will be solar, 22% wind, and the remaining 20% will be batteries. This project sets a roadmap for enabling greater penetration of green energy in the country, aiming to consolidate Mexico as one of the markets with the largest volume of renewable capacity in active planning in Latin America.
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