Linking alternative mobility and clean energies: Scenarios and condition factors for Mexico to make the transition towards sustainable and intramodal mobilities.

Résumé:

Linking alternative mobility and clean energies: Scenarios and condition factors for Mexico to make the transition towards sustainable and intramodal mobilities.

Professor Alex Covarrubias V. El Colegio de Sonora.

Abstract

In the last few years Mexico has turned into one of the hottest spots of the auto industry worldwide. In 2014 auto output reached 3.2 million units, 76 percent up from 2001, and the country become the larger producer in Latin America, the seventh producer and the fourth exporter worldwide, as well as the second exporter in the American market. This year it could reach 3.5 million as production has been increasing at a 9% rate in the last few years (Covarrubias, 2014). At this pace at the end of the decade the country could well reach the frontier of 5 million units, quickly approaching on third of the total NAFTA output. This work explores the possibilities that Mexico becomes a producer of EVs and other alternative train and mobility systems, despite the fact that OEMs keep manufacturing mostly ICVs and secondarily hybrids. It argues that such possibilities depend on the Mexican government's ability to turn the country into a hub for clean energies and deploy a `program to spur synergies between the automobile and the power sectors. The probabilities are based on the fact that Mexico is attracting growing flows of FDI towards alternative energies projects provided its ample and diverse endowments of natural resources. From 2003 to 2013 such leading firms as NGK, Dynamic Kontrol, Sanyo, Jabil Circuit, Rubenius, Iberdrola, Acciona, Grupo Safran, Ericsson, Odebrechedt, and Nissan poured in the country 11 billion to build wind and solar parks and created 22,000 jobs along 57 projects. Although Mexico has potential to churn out other clean energies, such as geothermal and hydraulic, its endowments in solar and wind energies are striking. According to European Photovoltaic Industry Association (2011), Mexico ranks third in solar potential, just next to China and Singapure. Likewise the wind potential in such regions as EL Istmo de Tehuantepec is among the best worldwide (INER, 2014). We elaborate our argument based on sustainability transitional theory (Elzen et al., 2004; Geels et al, 2010), stressing the co-evolution properties of linking e-integrated mobility and clean energy developments at macro and meso/intermediate levels in the Mexican context.