At LACEC’s first members’ meeting in Mexico, WRI Mexico’s executive director, Francisco Barnés, welcomed companies, developers, financial institutions, and associations that make up the coalition, and presented an agenda based on the dialogue held with the Mexican private sector since March 2026.
Mexico City, July 16, 2026.— The World Resources Institute Mexico (WRI Mexico) held the first members’ meeting of the Latin America Clean Energy Coalition (LACEC) in the country, successfully bringing together buying companies, developers, suppliers, financial institutions, associations, and partner organizations in a single conversation. This demonstrates LACEC’s value as a space for coordination.
The welcome was given by WRI Mexico’s executive director, Francisco Barnés, and aimed to hear members’ priorities, gather their feedback, and begin building LACEC’s working community in the country. More than 25 organizations participated, including Walmart, Nike, 3M, General Motors, Ternium, Fibra Uno, Mercado Libre, and Orbia, as well as developers, energy marketers, industry associations, and financial organizations.
A Market with Identified Opportunities and Barriers
In his remarks, Barnés noted that Mexico has abundant solar and wind resources, an expanding manufacturing industry, and growing corporate demand for clean energy as a lever for competitiveness and energy security, in a context marked by dependence on imported natural gas. However, he emphasized that significant challenges remain in access to financing, energy purchasing mechanisms, the regulatory framework, and the integration of storage into the system.
“Energy transition is one of the priorities we have defined within our institutional strategy, and we will continue to drive it forward, not only from an environmental perspective, but because at its core lies an opportunity for economic growth, for increasing the country’s competitiveness, and for advancing an energy security agenda,” he said.
During the meeting, three specific barriers currently holding back the market were identified: blocked financing for the corporate segment, clean energy purchasing mechanisms that lack sufficient maturity, and a storage market that has yet to take off.
Participants agreed that the coalition’s work must start from understanding the needs of corporate clean energy consumers and developing solutions that address their real barriers to procurement and competitiveness.
As a cross-cutting condition for these three fronts, participants agreed on the need for a minimum level of legal certainty, supported by four short-term regulatory decisions: updating the operational provisions to take advantage of the new 0.7-megawatt threshold for on-site generation, publishing CFE’s backup tariff, extending self-consumption permits beyond three years, and reviewing the treatment of legacy contracts and the excess purchase quota.
Likewise, buying companies agreed that economic competitiveness remains one of the main determinants for accelerating clean energy procurement, so the mechanisms developed by the coalition must help close that gap.
During the session, it was also noted that many consumers, even large ones, still lack specialized teams to manage their consumption and evaluate the different market options. For this reason, it is worth noting that the coalition can play a role that is not only technical and regulatory, but also one of guidance, information-sharing, and capacity building.
Three Working Fronts for 2026-2027
Based on this diagnosis, LACEC presented an agenda organized around three working fronts, with a commitment to dialogue with the National Energy Commission (CNE), the National Center for Energy Control (CENACE), and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE):
- Corporate financing for renewable energy. Aims to identify what prevents banks from financing renewable projects in the industrial and commercial sectors, and to co-design instruments based on evidence from other markets. This includes an international benchmark of instruments such as partial guarantees, public-private blending, and guarantee trusts, drawing on examples from Chile, Colombia, Brazil, and India, as well as a barrier diagnosis prepared with commercial and development banks and, in a second phase, the co-design of instruments with Nafin and Bancomext.
- Market access and clean energy purchasing mechanisms. Aims to ensure that any company can access clean energy through internationally recognized standardized contracts and alternative mechanisms—IRECs, CELs, and green tariffs. This includes a report on potential demand by sector and region, a comparative note on PPAs, IRECs, CELs, and green tariffs, and a toolkit with standard contracts and standardized RFP formats, developed with the CNE and based on the prior experience of the Clean Energy Investment Accelerator (CEIA).
- Smart storage and grid solutions. Aims to accelerate the regulatory and knowledge framework needed to integrate storage into corporate projects, drawing on models already validated in other markets, including advances in Brazil and Chile on this topic. This includes a mapping of barriers with companies already developing storage projects, a technical report on use cases for battery storage systems (BESS), and a technical note on their regulatory recognition as grid assets.
All three lines of work are backed by LACEC’s regional structure, which connects WRI’s analytical capacity, market knowledge from the Global Renewables Alliance and the Global Wind Energy Council, and the Climate Group’s access to the corporate market through its RE100 initiative, and which operates simultaneously in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.
Members Agree: The Agenda Must Be Built Around Corporate Consumer Needs
The second part of the session was devoted to an open discussion in which representatives from buying companies, qualified energy marketers, and associations shared their perspectives on the priorities presented. Several participants agreed that price competitiveness relative to fossil fuel-based schemes remains the variable that most limits renewable energy purchasing decisions, particularly for companies whose internal sustainability policies depend on the existence of cost savings.
Representatives of qualified energy marketers highlighted the need to strengthen end-user support, noting that a significant portion of large consumers in the wholesale electricity market still lack specialized energy management teams, despite electricity representing a significant share of their fixed costs. In this regard, they agreed that the coalition’s role is not only technical or regulatory, but also one of support and capacity building among buyers.
Other participants proposed broadening the focus of the storage front to include controllable demand mechanisms that would allow industry to reduce its energy needs, as well as strengthening compliance with and transparency around the coverage obligations already established in the current regulatory framework. It was also suggested that the barrier diagnosis should be built as a priority based on the specific needs of large energy consumers, to ensure that the agenda addresses the real obstacles they face in procuring clean energy, beyond mere market supply availability.
Next Steps
LACEC announced a roadmap for the coming months: during the week of July 20, the feedback gathered at the meeting will be incorporated into a final working agenda, which will be shared with all participating organizations before the end of July. Each organization’s points of contact for the coalition’s working groups and communications will be confirmed in August; in September, the calendar of workshops, webinars, and technical sessions for 2026 and 2027 will be defined; and in October, the working groups will formally begin, together with LACEC’s second plenary session in Mexico.
The coalition also announced that its first webinar on storage in the corporate market is scheduled for August 2026, and shared LACEC’s regional expansion timeline, with the coalition set to launch in Bogotá, Colombia, and in the state of Alagoas, in northeastern Brazil, in the coming weeks.
“The bottlenecks in Mexico are already well identified. What we’re looking for as a coalition isn’t another diagnosis, but organized action,” said LACEC representatives during the agenda presentation, closing with an invitation for member organizations to join the working groups that will begin in the coming months.