Peru’s Grid Model: The Key to Unlocking Mexico's Energy Future

Mexico’s energy transition is increasingly constrained not by a lack of generation capacity, but by the system’s limited ability to transport and integrate it efficiently. While the country has strong renewable energy potential and growing industrial demand, particularly driven by nearshoring, the transmission network has become the structural bottleneck.

This challenge is not unique to Mexico. What differentiates leading energy markets is how they address it. In this regard, Peru offers a compelling and pragmatic example through the private investment model for transmission infrastructure led by ProInversión.

Peru’s Model: Competitive, Structured, and Scalable

Over the past two decades, Peru has successfully deployed transmission projects under a public-private partnership (PPP) framework managed by ProInversión, its private investment promotion agency. The model rests on three defining features.

1. Centralized Planning with Private Execution

The government defines system expansion needs through long-term transmission planning, and projects are then tendered competitively to private developers. This structure aligns execution with national reliability objectives, promotes efficient capital allocation, and reduces delivery risk.

2. Long-Term Revenue Certainty

Transmission projects are awarded under long-term concession contracts, typically supported by stable remuneration schemes, availability-based payments, and limited demand-risk exposure. This structure strengthens bankability and attracts international investors at competitive financing costs.

3. Transparent and Competitive Tendering

The ProInversión process combines clear technical specifications, predictable contracting frameworks, and participation from global players. Together, these features have supported cost efficiency and timely project delivery.

Taken together, Peru’s experience shows that public planning and private execution can coexist within a framework that protects national priorities while accelerating infrastructure development.

Why This Matters for Mexico

Mexico’s transmission limitations are already affecting renewable project timelines, industrial connections, congestion levels, and dispatch efficiency. Without accelerated grid expansion, the country risks underusing existing and future generation capacity while slowing economic growth associated with nearshoring.

The key question, therefore, is not whether investment is needed, but how it can be structured effectively.

Lessons Applicable to Mexico

Drawing from Peru’s experience, several principles could strengthen Mexico’s transmission expansion strategy while supporting the objectives established under Plan México.

Plan México positions energy and infrastructure as strategic components of national and industrial development. Its objectives include strengthening energy sovereignty, expanding national production, reducing external dependence, and developing stronger domestic supply chains (Gobierno de México, 2025).

The scale of this ambition creates an important opportunity for collaboration. Plan México considers approximately MX$5.3 trillion (US$303 billion) in national and foreign investment for new projects between 2025 and 2030, particularly in strategic sectors such as energy, water, and transportation (IMCO, 2025). Transmission infrastructure will be essential to ensure that this investment translates into operational industrial capacity, reliable electricity supply, and timely connections for new projects.

1. Strengthen Structured Private Participation

Mexico already has different forms of private-sector involvement in its electricity industry. The opportunity is therefore not simply to introduce private participation, but to establish clearer and more structured mechanisms through which private capital, technology, and execution capabilities can complement public investment.

Achieving the investment objectives of Plan México by 2030 would require average annual public and private investment of approximately MX$891 billion (IMCO, 2025). Under a model that preserves the state’s strategic planning authority, public control of the transmission network, and CFE’s central role, structured private participation could accelerate project execution, optimize life-cycle costs, mobilize complementary financing, reduce pressure on public resources, and contribute technical and project-management capabilities.

Private participation should be understood as a tool for expanding the state’s capacity to implement its energy strategy, rather than as a substitute for public leadership.

2. Ensure Revenue and Regulatory Certainty

Transmission infrastructure is capital-intensive and requires long-term planning. Mobilizing complementary investment and technical capacity depends on transparent remuneration mechanisms, regulatory stability, clear risk allocation, predictable procurement and contracting processes, alignment with national energy planning, transparent project selection, and effective accountability.

Legal and regulatory certainty will be essential to attract private investment into the energy and logistics sectors and to channel that capital toward projects aligned with the state’s strategy (IMCO, 2025). This represents an opportunity for Mexico to establish an investment framework in which public priorities are clearly defined and private participation complements national development objectives.

3. Align Planning, Sovereignty, and Execution

One of the most relevant lessons from Peru is the alignment between system planning and project tendering. This is especially important for Mexico because the Plan de Fortalecimiento y Expansión del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional 2025–2030 requires large-scale investment to modernize and expand generation and transmission infrastructure (IMCO, 2025).

For Mexico, this means translating grid expansion plans into actionable projects and tenders, establishing clear implementation schedules, prioritizing corridors serving industrial clusters and development hubs, connecting regions with high renewable-energy potential, coordinating generation growth with transmission deployment, strengthening domestic supply chains and technical capabilities, and defining measurable milestones for delivery.

Transmission planning must advance alongside generation policy. Expanding generation without simultaneously developing the grid could result in connection delays, congestion, and limitations on the delivery of electricity to demand centers. Moving from strategic objectives to an actionable investment portfolio will require public resources, private capital, and carefully designed mixed financing mechanisms (IMCO, 2025).

4. Mobilize Mixed Financing for Strategic Infrastructure

The scale and long-term nature of transmission projects create an opportunity to strengthen public-private financing structures. Trusts and other financial instruments can help channel public and private investment efficiently, provide continuity for long-term projects, and reduce exposure to annual budget constraints (IMCO, 2025). Because these are public-interest assets, such mechanisms should operate under clear rules and high standards of transparency and accountability (IMCO, 2025). The objective is not to reduce the State’s role, but to increase its capacity to deliver strategic infrastructure through carefully designed partnerships.

Strategic Implications for the Energy Sector

These policy and financing decisions will not remain confined to the institutional sphere; they will directly reshape how energy companies plan, invest, and contract in Mexico.

For energy companies, evolving transmission dynamics will directly influence portfolio optimization strategies, site selection for new projects, and the design of commercial structures for industrial clients. Grid availability, connection timelines, congestion costs, and system reliability will increasingly determine where projects are viable and how companies can offer competitive, dependable energy solutions.

The ability to anticipate and align with grid evolution will therefore become an increasingly important competitive differentiator.

Mexico stands at a strategic crossroads. The combination of growing industrial demand, renewable potential, and geographic advantage positions the country to become a key energy hub in the Americas. Realizing this opportunity, however, depends on addressing foundational infrastructure gaps.

Peru’s experience demonstrates that private-sector participation in transmission is not merely theoretical; it can operate within a structured public framework and contribute to faster project delivery, efficient capital deployment, and improved system reliability.

Transmission should not be viewed as a bottleneck, but as a strategic enabler of economic growth and the energy transition. Adopting selected elements from regional best practices in Peru, Brazil, and Chile could help Mexico unlock stranded renewable potential, support industrial expansion linked to nearshoring, and enhance system reliability and competitiveness.

Ultimately, the success of the energy transition will depend not only on how much capacity is installed, but on how effectively it is connected, dispatched, and integrated into the system.

Mexico’s transmission strategy can combine public leadership, structured private participation, mixed financing, and long-term national planning. Properly designed, these elements can accelerate grid expansion while preserving State control and advancing the objectives of Plan México: greater energy sovereignty, stronger domestic production, reduced external dependence, regional development, and sustained industrial growth.