The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE)'s announcement of construction of a Combined Cycle Fossil Gas Plant in Los Cabos did not consider environmental impact or human health, said the Center for Renewable Energy and Environmental Quality (CERCA).
“On the one hand, it takes into account the electrical need that is visible everywhere... but I think that is the only element that is taken into account... The elements that are missing here are those on the environmental side,” said Jaqueline Valenzuela, director of CERCA.
The CFE announced in a statement the construction of the power plant in Los Cabos, which will have a generation capacity of 240 megawatts together with 11 other projects that make up the Plan for Strengthening the National Electricity System. This is important in the context of attracting industries to Mexico through the reduction of production costs derived from relocation, a strategy known as nearshoring.
According to Valenzuela, the CFE plan can boost productive activities or curb them, hence the importance of energy not only in the domestic sector, but also in the industrial sector, whose impacts on the environment must be assessed.
La Paz and Fossil Gas Dependency
The construction of a thermoelectric plant that will run on fossil gas indicates that the proposal is for the northwest to continue to run on fossil fuels, Valenzuela said.
The CFE has experience with the combined cycle; access to diesel with fuel and gas in the region; so it opted for a technology that would allow it to operate the plant in 2028.
The tourism boost in Los Cabos was accompanied by a 47.2% population growth between 2010 and 2020. The urban growth that began in Cabo San Lucas and progressed through San José del Cabo, is now extending to the Eastern Cape area.
For Valenzuela, the decision to build in Los Cabos is backed by a reduction in electricity transmission costs. Since 1979, La Paz has been the energy heart of Baja California Sur, since most of the state's energy generation is produced there and transmitted to other municipalities, such as Los Cabos.
“Relying on La Paz for electricity generation, especially when you talk about Los Cabos, a thriving municipality, whose growth plans are expanding at a very rapid rate, would not be bearable,” Valenzuela said.
Air pollution
Currently, there is no official environmental quality monitoring in Los Cabos, only one citizen that performs CERCA. At no monitoring site, since this monitoring began, has there been a record of good air quality.
However, because there are no official data to confirm environmental pollution, Semarnat cannot intervene in the installation of the plant.
“There is no local information because air quality in the municipality of Los Cabos is not measured in a regulatory manner. So, we don't have a component for Semarnat to state that we need to pay attention to this project. While the CFE only needs to know what technology it is going to invest in, what budget it has, where it is going to get the fuel supply, have operating permits and land use,” said Valenzuela.
If built, environmental quality could deteriorate in Los Cabos due to the addition of the power plant to motorization, traffic on unauthorized roads, the extraction of stone material, emissions from maritime, air and land transport; and the fires in the San José del Cabo landfill and estuary.
“As citizens, and in particular the City Council of Los Cabos, you must raise your voice and manage with the Federation the most sustainable conditions to generate electricity because there is already a problem, not caused by electricity generation, but there is already a problem,” Valenzuela said.
Currently, the Los Cabos power plant project is in a phase of political and citizen management. Subsequently, public tenders will be opened to be assigned to a company that will carry out the works and that will have to obtain permits, including environmental impact authorization from Semarnat.
Valenzuela said that Semarnat must comprehensively evaluate this project and, in turn, use land planning to attack other sources of air pollution.
“Here is an opportunity with the municipality of Los Cabos as an interlocutor and with the Federation; to analyze electrical projects from a multisectoral and basin approach; to consider the carrying capacity of the atmospheric basin. There is a lot to do in terms of land use, if we don't make progress on that, it's not going to be feasible (carrying out the project),” Valenzuela said.
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