According to a research funded by the German foreign development agency GiZ, Mexico has the capacity to construct 22TW of green hydrogen infrastructure, including public transportation, electricity production, and the petrochemical sector as important areas for growth.
According to William Jensen, a consultant for the Mexico-Germany Energy Alliance, the potential for developing green hydrogen, which is hydrogen created from renewable energy sources, is particularly high in northwest Mexico, where solar power resources are abundant.
Public transportation, long-distance freight trucks, heavy industries, Pemex’s refining and petrochemical sectors, and power production and electricity storage are all identified as significant areas of opportunity in the research, which was commissioned by the Mexico-Germany Energy Alliance.
According to the research, green hydrogen use in Pemex’s downstream sector — including refining and ammonia manufacturing — may be worth $1.3 billion per year by 2030, with 1.5 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity driven by green hydrogen by 2050.
Mexico’s green hydrogen-powered public transportation system may serve 250,000 buses and 250,000 freight vehicles by 2050, generating 1,750 t/yr of demand and employing 90,000 people.
Under the UN Paris climate accord, Mexico pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 22 percent by 2030 compared to a 2005 baseline under the previous government of Enrique Pena Nieto, increasing to 50 percent by 2050. However, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s government has mainly ignored emission-reduction initiatives, with gas flaring more than tripling since 2018, renewable energy development restricted, and coal and fuel oil-powered electricity favored.
In the absence of federal initiatives, state governments are taking the lead with more aggressive renewable energy and emissions projects, such as Puebla state’s capacity to create 9,850 t/yr of green hydrogen.
Puebla’s administration is banking on renewable energy and gas projects to spur job creation and investment in the state, and it aims to attract the country’s first hydrogen investments to help with industry and public transportation.
