In Mexico, supreme court rules 2023 electricity reform unconstitutional

The Supreme Court (SCJN) on Wednesday ruled that a law that favors the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) over private companies is unconstitutional, dealing a blow to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s energy agenda. Reforms to the Electricity Industry Law (LIE) that gave power generated by the CFE priority on the national grid were passed by Congress in March 2021. The CFE was given priority in selling electricity to Mexico’s national power grid in the 2021 reform. (CFE) Under the new law, private companies that generate electricity that is often cheaper and cleaner than that produced by the CFE were sidelined. [...] The SCJN said in a statement that the Second Chamber determined that “the order of priority in the dispatch of electricity” as set out in the 2021 Electricity Industry Law violates constitutionally-enshrined principles of free competition in Mexico’s power sector. Instead of meeting the “efficiency criterion” in the constitution, the government’s secondary legislation prioritizes “state generators (CFE) or plants associated with them, creating an alteration in the electricity market,” the SCJN said. The court also said that the new LIE disincentivized the production of clean energy in violation of the “principle of sustainable development.” [...] López Obrador also said he was planning to send a constitutional reform proposal to Congress next Monday that is aimed at canceling the 2013 energy reform. The president intends to submit as many as 20 constitutional reform proposals to Congress on Feb. 5, and he said [...] that one would be “a modification to the constitution to leave the constitution as it was before the so-called energy reform.” Most of his proposals are likely to fail as the ruling Morena party and its allies don’t have the two-thirds majority in Congress that is required to make changes to the constitution.
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