Mexico’s State Power Firm Charts US$39.8 Billion Power Expansion Through 2030

Mexico · ENERGY

A five-year map for state power investment, with a new Baja California line as its most visible piece.

The Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), Mexico’s state power utility, published a five-year investment map on 26 August 2026. The CFE development programme commits 675.96 billion pesos (US$39.8 billion) to new plants, transmission lines and substations.

What the utility published this week

CFE issued the document on Wednesday 26 August 2026 through a company statement. The release came as a corporate publication rather than a set-piece government launch event.

The CFE development programme covers the five years from 2026 to 2030. It replaces the utility’s earlier Plan de Negocios, or business plan, as the company’s main planning document.

CFE says the text answers three questions: where the company starts, where it is going, and what it expects. It sets out growth targets, investment needs, financing sources and projected financial results.

The baseline is the end of 2025, when CFE served 49.8 million users. It ran more than 111,000 kilometres of transmission lines and 908,000 kilometres of distribution networks.

At that point CFE held about 51% of installed capacity in the Sistema Eléctrico Nacional (SEN), the national power system. The rest sits with private generators and independent power producers.

Where the money goes

The headline number is 675.96 billion pesos (US$39.8 billion) for 2026 to 2030. That conversion uses the Banco de México FIX rate of 16.9660 pesos per dollar on 26 August 2026.

Generation takes 492.3 billion pesos (US$29.0 billion) across 72 projects. Of that, 467.3 billion pesos (US$27.5 billion) funds 52 new projects and 25 billion pesos (US$1.5 billion) covers 20 inherited ones.

Transmission gets 131.9 billion pesos (US$7.8 billion) for 175 projects adding 7,545 kilometres of line. Distribution gets 51.8 billion pesos (US$3.1 billion) for 97 new substations and 95 expansions.

Those three lines add to roughly 651 billion pesos (US$38.4 billion), the figure several Mexican outlets led with. The wider total of 675.96 billion pesos (US$39.8 billion) also folds in the 20 inherited generation projects.

New capacity and the state’s share

The CFE development programme adds 18,597 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity through its 52 new projects. Renewable and zero-emission technologies account for 15,203 MW, or 82% of those additions.

The utility’s own capacity, excluding independent power producers, would rise from 46.6 gigawatts (GW) to 70.7 GW by 2030. That is a gain of 24.1 GW, about 52% in five years.

The company’s share of generation in the SEN would climb from 43% to 53%. Counting plants held through the Fondo Nacional de Infraestructura, or FONADIN, the state share would reach 62%.

Renewables would grow from 21% to 34% of CFE generation by 2030. The company calls this the largest renewable capacity build-out in its own history.

How the build-out gets financed

More than half the planned financing would sit outside the utility’s own balance sheet. Mixed schemes that pair company money with private capital carry most of the renewable plants.

In those mixed generation deals, CFE must keep a stake of at least 54%. That leaves operational control with the state while private partners fund part of the cost.

For transmission, the plan leans on Fibra E, a Mexican listed infrastructure trust structure. CFE Capital has already asked regulators to authorise such an offering.

The debt mix also shifts, with leases falling from 65% to 37% of borrowings. Financial debt raised in public capital markets would take a larger place instead.

Is the CFE development programme the first of its kind

The claim needs care. CFE says this is the first public version of its medium-term plan, and that it replaces the internal business plan.

Mexico has published electricity plans for years under other names. The Secretaría de Energía issued the Programa de Desarrollo del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional, or PRODESEN, from 2015 onward.

PRODESEN planned the whole national system, private plants included, over a fifteen-year horizon. Its successor, the Plan de Desarrollo del Sector Eléctrico (PLADESE) 2025-2039, appeared in October 2025.

So the honest reading is narrower than the headline. This is the utility’s own corporate plan made public for the first time, not Mexico’s first power plan.

The Baja California line inside the plan

One recent project shows what the transmission money buys. CFE put a 230-kilovolt line into service in Tijuana and Tecate, announced on 25 August 2026.

The line runs 20 kilometres on 148 towers and serves about one million people. The company calls it an extra electrical highway that relieves the existing network.

It belongs to the reinforcement works for the González Ortega combined-cycle plant near Mexicali. That plant, rated just over 745 MW, began commercial operation in May 2026.

No cost figure or separate completion date appeared in the announcement. Both remain unconfirmed, and the published plan does not break out this project on its own.

Why Baja California is a special case

Baja California long sat outside the Sistema Interconectado Nacional, or SIN, the main national grid. The peninsula ran its own separate system for decades.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said in June 2026 that a 300 MW link now connects Baja California to the rest of the country. She described it as the first such connection for the peninsula.

That history explains why local reinforcement matters so much in the state. Extra local lines carry more weight where imports from the rest of Mexico stay limited.

Tijuana and Tecate sit in one of the state’s fastest-growing industrial corridors. The new line is meant to support housing, commerce and factories there.

What the plan leaves open for investors

The Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad, a think tank known as IMCO, published a warning days earlier. It said official planning assumes a smaller economy than Plan México, the government’s industrial strategy, aims to build.

IMCO calculates that meeting Plan México goals would need electricity demand 10.1% above the PLADESE path by 2030. That gap equals roughly 11.9 GW of generation nobody has planned.

Official planning assumes electricity consumption grows about 2.5% a year to 2030. IMCO argues the industrial targets would require closer to 4.5% a year.

For foreign investors that gap is the point of interest, not the peso totals. Grid capacity, rather than headline spending, decides whether new factories can plug in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• app.cfe.mx
• forbes.com.mx
• www.cronica.com.mx
• energiaadebate.com
• www.razon.com.mx
• energiaadebate.com
• www.cronica.com.mx
• energiaadebate.com
• www.gob.mx
• www.infobae.com
• www.banxico.org.mx
• riotimesonline.com
• riotimesonline.com

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