British solar firm Hive Energy has opened new offices in Mexico in a bid to break into the country's thriving solar sector amid ongoing market turbulence back in the UK.
The firm said the move, which was announced yesterday, is part of its international expansion strategy to gain a foothold in Mexico and the wider Central America region, where the falling cost of deployment, coupled with a favourable political climate, mean the country's solar sector is poised for strong growth.
"The stage in Mexico is set to see cheaper, green, clean energy replace high-cost, carbon emitting electricity generation," Hive Energy chief executive Giles Redpath said in a statement. "Without any subsidies or FITs to roll back, Mexico's solar market is almost certain to persist in the long term and we want to take this opportunity to supporting the fledgling solar industry with our wealth of experience, while generating employment opportunities and giving customers choice in how they source their electricity."
The country's 2012 Climate Law requires that 35 per cent of electricity is generated from renewable sources by 2024 and that carbon emissions are cut by half by 2050, against a 2000 baseline. The country's energy ministry, the Secretaría de Energía, expects these targets to deliver a 6GW increase in Mexico's solar capacity by 2020, with solar PV and solar thermal making up five per cent of Mexico's energy by 2030.
Bernardo Fernandez, Hive Energy's director of business development and project management in the region, will lead the firm's solar PV projects in the area with a focus on utility-scale power plants and commercial rooftop installations.
He said high electricity prices and regulatory reforms are creating a "huge opportunity" for renewable energy in Mexico.
"Following recent reforms of the energy market in Mexico, we're now able to provide an economically viable, clean source of energy at an affordable price in what is potentially the biggest emerging solar energy market in the world," he said.
The news comes as solar developers in the UK - where Hive Energy is based - are facing ongoing turbulence in the market as they await more detail on the impending changes to the Feed-in Tariff incentive scheme, which was announced by the UK government just before Christmas.
Accreditation under the current tariff rates is set to be paused for four weeks from January 15, as the government prepares to introduce new tariff bands and a system of quarterly caps on deployment to ensure spending under the Levy Control Framework is kept under control.
However, key industry figures voiced their concern last week that the policy has been rushed through, claiming many developers are still in the dark about how many aspects of the new incentive scheme will work.
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