SENER Authorizes CENACE to Purchase Electricity

To address structural electricity shortages and grid emergencies, Mexico has formalized a new regulatory framework allowing CENACE to purchase power directly from private generators through Reliability Procurement Mechanisms. This measure responds to a 3.5% annual growth in demand driven by nearshoring and data centers, which has resulted in frequent blackouts and strained transmission in northern and central industrial corridors. By establishing a competitive, fixed-price bidding process for private supply, the regulation seeks to safeguard industrial investment and grid stability while navigating the fiscal constraints of the CFE and the state-led energy model.

Facing a structural electricity supply challenge that has produced repeated grid emergencies and threatens the country's ability to capture nearshoring-driven industrial growth, the federal government has formalized a new regulatory mechanism that allows CENACE to purchase electricity directly from private generators on an emergency basis when demand threatens to exceed system capacity. The regulation, elaborated by CNE and published in the Official Gazette, establishes the legal framework and operating procedures for what the document calls Mecanismos de Adquisición por Confiabilidad (Reliability Procurement Mechanisms), which are designed to prevent blackouts when the national grid cannot meet demand from its existing generation resources.

"In the event that CENACE identifies that the resources in operation across each Interconnected System are insufficient to guarantee reliable operations, it may initiate the process to implement the Reliability Procurement Mechanisms," the regulation states. The framework is explicitly demand-anticipatory: CENACE is required to proactively review demand forecasts, operating reserves, and plant availability across planning windows ranging from one month to three years, identifying shortfalls before they become emergencies rather than responding after the fact.

The regulation establishes a clear operational sequence. CENACE must first attempt to resolve any identified supply shortfall through available internal resources, including existing plants, additional capacity from current operators, and mobile generation units. Only when those options prove insufficient may the operator proceed to activate the reliability procurement mechanism and issue open calls to private sector participants.

Those calls must specify exactly where the electricity is needed, how much, in what hours and time blocks, and for what duration, with timelines adjustable to address identified system conditions. Companies responding to the calls must submit technical information about their generating assets along with a single fixed price per unit of energy that will remain stable throughout the contract period. CENACE will evaluate offers against two criteria: ensuring the system can operate without reliability risks, and, where multiple technically equivalent alternatives exist at the same interconnection point, selecting the lowest-cost option. The market architecture, in other words, is designed to be competitive on price while prioritizing grid stability as the primary objective.

The Problem the Regulation Addresses

The new mechanism reflects a structural reality that has become increasingly difficult to manage through CFE's generation fleet alone. Mexico's electricity consumption has been compounding at 3.5% annually, driven by industrial expansion, nearshoring, and the growth of data centers, while CENACE reported 104 emergency grid events in 2024. This underscores how frequently the system has been operating near or at its operational limits. According to CENACE, over 60% of the national transmission network operates near its maximum capacity, with critical bottlenecks concentrated in high-demand corridors like Bajio, Nuevo Leon, and the northern border states where nearshoring-driven industrial expansion is most intense.

The CFE budget allocated for 2026 is 16.7% lower in real terms than the 2025 budget, creating a direct tension: with less public investment available, the private sector becomes increasingly essential to guarantee supply. The PLADESE 2025–2039, Mexico's national electricity development plan, projects that peak demand will grow 50.6% by 2039, reaching 83,643MWh/h, a trajectory that makes the current generation gap a structural challenge rather than a cyclical one.

The business consequences of supply disruptions are well-documented and severe. Losses in manufacturing alone may reach US$200 million per hour during blackouts, and global companies establishing operations in Mexico are increasingly conditioning investment decisions on access to reliable power. A data center requiring 40MW of constant supply cannot operate in a zone that experiences frequent grid emergencies, a constraint that directly threatens Mexico's ability to capture the most capital-intensive segments of the nearshoring cycle.

A Pragmatic Shift Within a Constrained Framework

The reliability procurement regulation is significant not just operationally but politically. For years, the energy policy under former President López Obrador, and to a degree under the current Sheinbaum administration, has sought to maintain CFE's dominant role in generation and resist mechanisms that systematically channel demand to private producers. The new mechanism does not constitute a structural market opening in the tradition of the 2013 energy reform. It is framed as an emergency backstop, not a permanent market structure. But by formally authorizing CENACE to contract privately generated electricity under defined conditions, and by establishing a transparent, competitive process for doing so, the regulation creates an operational precedent that acknowledges what grid data has been showing for years: CFE alone cannot guarantee supply reliability under current and projected demand conditions.

Mexico's new Electricity Sector Law, published in March 2025, confirmed that private sector participation in generation and supply will be permitted within a new regulatory framework, while reinforcing CFE's majority role in dispatch and grid management. The reliability procurement mechanism sits within that legal architecture, a practical instrument for managing the growing space between the state's ideological preference for public generation and the operational reality of a grid under sustained pressure.