Information Sources
The information for Mexico that is presented in this section was obtained from publicly available databases and reports corresponding to the year 2005, which are part of the INEM 2005. Mexico emissions data and general information about the Mexican power system were compiled from the following sources:
Comisión Reguladora de Energía (CRE)
The CRE grants the authorizations to IPP and private producers to generate electricity. These authorizations become public information that can be consulted through the CRE website. Companies authorized to produce electricity should report their emissions to the appropriate authority.
Since until recently, electricity production in Mexico was centralized, electricity producers were still under strict control by the CRE in 2005. Therefore, it was possible to gather information from all of the electric utilities. However, in most cases, self-supply and cogeneration plants only reported their total emissions in 2005, without any specific details about the portion corresponding to electricity production.
The information available through the CRE for these plants includes: the authorized plant generation capacity, the authorized annual electricity generation, operation starting date, primary fuel and technology; however, there were no data for the actual electricity generation nor the amount of fuel consumed. Therefore, it was not possible to determine the emissions from the power generation activities of these plants.
Secretaría de Energía (Sener)
The national energy balance is compiled and published by Sener. The energy balance was used to verify overall generation by fuel type and geographical distribution. The Mexican electric system description was also obtained from Sener [14].
Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE)
This source allowed us to verify the number of facilities that operated in 2005, and to identify if there were facilities that did not report their emissions in that year. Thus, data for 102 Mexican facilities are included in the present report.
CEC Report(s)
Most of the emissions information was obtained from a database generated for a report commissioned by the CEC [30, 31] to support the development of the 2005 Mexican National Emissions Inventory (INEM). In that report, the emissions generated by Mexican power plants were estimated using United States EPA emission factors (AP-42), along with the information supplied by the power plants through the Annual Report of Operation (COA) on fuel consumption, generation and other operating characteristics. COA reports are submitted to the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) during the first third of the year following the reporting year. For some greenhouse gases, emissions factors developed by Sener were used [30, 31].