The energy sector plays an important role in Mexico’s development trajectory. Mexico makes an interesting case study because it shows how difficult it is to reduce fossil energy dependence despite geographic and climatic conditions that favour renewable energy deployment and use. Resolving path dependencies and the related carbon lock-in are key to Mexico’s sustainable energy transition. This applied teaching guide contemplates the use of a case-illustration typology to identify and discuss how the politics about carbon lock-in affects Mexico’s sustainable energy transition. This methodology is an innovative endeavour that aims to apply the case study in classrooms with the intention to encourage discussions and solution-oriented approaches when tangible actions are identified by the educator and students. This methodology elevates the case study to a “living” case study that leads to recommended actions. The applied teaching guide allows educators, who are mostly researchers, to reflect on how Mexico’s case study could be explained not only to promote the students’ understanding of the challenges, but also to provide educators/researchers the skills on how to effectively disseminate knowledge. Mexico’s carbon lock-in involves oil and oil-run power plants that are costly to build but relatively inexpensive to operate. To conclude, this case study identifies potential entry points for transitioning towards sustainable energy in Mexico—resources that can promote the use of clean energy despite carbon lock-in. For example, focusing on electrification—particularly the carbon-intensive sectors—can help Mexico transit towards sustainable energy despite institutional constraints. Complementing this case study is a teaching guide with recommendations for using Mexico’s energy transition in courses on sustainability. By understanding how to explain the case study, the educator/researcher can better structure the complexity of the case study. This approach introduces a “learning activation framework” to identify emerging opportunities that can advance sustainable energy transitions in different cases of carbon lock-in. The framework also gives students a chance to help dismantle or cope with carbon lock-ins. Mexico’s energy transition makes a valuable teaching example because its energy transition is part of a broader developmental goal. This teaching guide’s systematic approach can maximise the students’ learning experience.
We present a review of wind energy development in Mexico, factors hampering this development, and proposals for solutions to address this hampering. This review is relevant in the context of climate change mitigation strategies and the achievement of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Wind energy can be harvested at competitive costs to solve society’s energy poverty and climate change problems. Firstly, we present the current wind energy installed capacity and wind power generation status globally and in Mexico and discuss why Mexico is lagging behind, particularly since 2020. Despite this lag, several state governors are still considering wind energy developments. The current economic context is then considered, with community wind energy as a solution forward for wind energy development, using a successful case study from the UK that has addressed energy poverty and provided an additional income source for an island community. Any community energy project using wind as its main energy resource relies on accurate wind energy assessment in its feasibility analysis. Thus, an evaluation of different wind energy atlases for Mexico was performed, which showed that models considering microscale processes could lead to a relative difference of more than 50% when compared to those that do not consider them. This led to the conclusion that microscale effects must be considered in wind energy characterization models. Furthermore, it is acknowledged that wind faces other challenges, such as the effect of future climate change scenarios, grid planning, and vulnerability and risk associated with tropical storms, which can be substantial in Mexico. Solutions are proposed in the form of possible wind power generation scenarios, planning and implementation of centralized and distributed transmission lines, and possible wind siting and technological choices to reduce the vulnerability and risk to tropical storms. Finally, we close with some future perspectives for researchers and decision-makers. The main conclusions are that sustainable growth can only be compatible with a transition to renewable sources of energy, energy community projects can address energy poverty and achieve sustainable development goals, wind energy feasibility studies need to include microscale effects, return of investment can be improved by siting the wind farms in regions of low vulnerability and risk to extreme events, and high-voltage transmission lines are crucial for sustainable development, even with the important role that distributed systems play. Finally, turbine growth and materials recycling, among other factors, must be considered when assessing the environmental impacts of wind farm decommissioning.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.