Boosting Energy Efficiency and Solar Energy inside the Residential, Commercial, and Public Services Sectors in Mexico

Abstract

The residential, commercial, and public sectors consume between 20% and 30% of final energy demand worldwide. Due to the intensive use of fossil fuels and conventional electricity, they also have an important participation in the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). Taking Mexico as a case study, this article develops an alternative scenario that considers that in these sectors, buildings can generate energy for self-consumption or to supply it to the power network—for which four solar energy options are analyzed. In addition, to manage and rationalize the energy demand of these buildings, eight energy efficiency measures are studied. These options were selected on the basis that they are technically and economically feasible to implement in buildings in Mexico. The results reveal that by 2030, in relation to the GHG trend scenario, this mitigation scenario reduces 23.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in the residential (19 MtCO2e), commercial (2.6 MtCO2e), and public services sectors (1.9 MtCO2e), while by 2035 it reaches 45 MtCO2e; which far exceed the avoided emissions goals established in Mexico’s nationally determined contributions (NDC) for 2030 (5 MtCO2e) for the residential and commercial sectors. Therefore, it is possible to increase the ambition for mitigation in these sectors, as well as including the public sector, in a renewed Mexico’s NDC. This mitigation scenario generates a total economic benefit of $7.7 billion, which means that it does not generate an overall incremental cost, but requires an incremental investment of over $9 billion USD, which is a financing challenge to achieve this scenario.