Renewable Energy Transition: The Best Is Yet to Be Built

In the spring of 1993, I missed my daughter’s first steps. I was building an academic career I loved while my mother helped care for my 11-month-old daughter. One evening, I arrived home late, and her father greeted me with the sentence that would break any first-time mother’s heart: “Karlita took her first steps. You missed them.” I cried until I almost fell asleep by the side of her crib.

And then, immersed in the dramatic logic of a young mother, I decided I had two options. I could continue working and keep missing moments like that, or I could leave my job and dedicate myself completely to my daughter. Neither one was a future I wanted.

Fortunately, after enough crying, I discovered something that has remained with me ever since: there was a third option. I could continue doing work that mattered deeply to me and, at the same time, intentionally build the relationship I wanted with my daughter. It would require choices, adjustments, compromises, and some discomfort. It would certainly not happen by itself. But it was possible.

The dilemma had not disappeared. What disappeared was my assumption that only two futures existed. I think about that experience often when we talk about the energy transition.

We have become strangely accustomed to framing Mexico’s energy future as a choice between uncomfortable alternatives: Energy security or environmental protection; Development or decarbonization; Affordable energy or renewable energy; Industrial growth or sustainability.

What if some of those dilemmas are not inevitable? What if we simply have not worked hard enough on the third option?

Hopeful Conclusion

In our recent paper, "Another World Is Possible: Exploring 100% Renewable Energy Supply Scenarios for Mexico to 2050," my colleagues and I asked whether Mexico could supply its entire final energy demand with renewable sources by 2050, not only electricity, but the energy required for transportation, industry, homes, and the rest of the economy. Our conclusion is remarkably hopeful: With renewable resources available in Mexico and technologies that already exist, a 100% renewable energy system is technically possible.

This matters not because a model can tell us exactly what Mexico should do. It cannot. It matters because it removes a wall from our imagination. We no longer need to begin the conversation with: “It cannot be done.” We can begin it with: “It can be done. How do we do it well?” And those are two profoundly different starting points.

A renewable energy future is not desirable simply because renewable technologies are newer or because decarbonization has become an international commitment. It is desirable because the energy system we build is inseparable from the society in which we want to live. A cleaner energy system means confronting one of the principal sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Our scenarios show that a completely renewable supply could eliminate energy-related greenhouse gas emissions within the system modelled. That is already reason enough to pursue it seriously in a world facing an accelerating climate crisis.

But the opportunity is larger. The transition gives us a chance to ask whether energy can also become healthier, more accessible, more resilient and more responsive to the diversity of Mexican territories. Can we use this transformation to improve energy services for communities historically left behind? Can distributed renewable systems strengthen local capabilities rather than simply deliver technology? Can new industries create skilled jobs and Mexican intellectual property? Can efficiency give people the same, or better, energy services while requiring fewer resources? Can communities participate meaningfully in deciding what gets built in their territories?

A 100% renewable future does not automatically guarantee any of those things. But it shows a path to make them possible. That is precisely why the next stage cannot belong to engineering alone. While our study centers on technical feasibility, it is not the be-all and end-all for making the transition happen. The full picture requires economic, political, legal, and social perspectives to make the transition happen, which will raise challenging questions and might even make us uncomfortable, but those are not reasons to reduce our ambitions. They drive the research, innovation, and governance agendas that technical possibility now places in front of us.

The focus then is no longer wondering whether a perfect and clear pathway exists. Of course it doesn’t. The question is whether we have enough time, knowledge and talent to create one. I believe we do.

Extraordinarily Fortunate

Mexico is extraordinarily fortunate in renewable resources. But sunshine, wind and biomass are not our only assets. We have universities, research institutes, engineering schools and technical communities that have spent decades developing knowledge about renewable energy. We have companies capable of manufacturing, adapting and deploying technologies. We have younger generations entering engineering, science, social sciences, policy and entrepreneurship who will spend their professional lives living with the decisions we make today. And we still have something enormously valuable: time to choose with intention and purpose.

2050 sounds close when viewed through the lens of climate urgency, but it is also almost a generation of technological learning, institution-building, investment, and social innovation. Enough time to improve technologies. Enough time to train people. Enough time to develop industries. Enough time to learn from mistakes. Enough time to design better institutions and better ways of working with communities. But only if we begin. Waiting until every ounce of uncertainty disappears is itself a decision about the future, and probably the least imaginative one available to us.

Thirty-three years ago, discovering that there was a third option did not provide me with an instruction manual for combining motherhood with the professional life I wanted. I had to build that option while living it. I made mistakes. I changed routines. I learned what mattered and what could be negotiated. Most importantly, I had time and people around and near me to make it work.

Our renewable future is not so different. The model does not give Mexico an instruction manual. It gives us something perhaps more valuable: evidence that another option exists. Now we have to build it.

We have the renewable resources. We have the knowledge. We have the talent. And, if we use it wisely, we still have the time.