In order to meet its goal of generating 43 percent of its electricity from clean sources by 2024, Mexico installed 2.3 million solar panels, SBSNews says. The panels were installed in the desert of Coahuila, and cover the equivalent of 2,200 football fields.
Built by Italian energy company Enelare, the $650 million project came online in December, and is schedule to become fully operational later this year. The solar field is expected to produce 1,700-gigawatt hours, which is enough to power 1.3 million homes; it is said to be the largest solar project in the world outside China and India.
According to SBSnews, Mexico won plaudits from environmentalists in 2015 when “it became the first emerging country to announce its emissions reduction targets for the United Nations climate accord, ambitiously vowing to halve them by 2050.” In order to get there, the state has tendered three projects, which have generated an estimated $8.6 billion in investments. “The resulting electricity will power some 6.5 million homes, according to government figures,” SBSNews says.
What decision makers can learn from this:
Even though Mexico had the physical bandwidth for millions of solar panels, businesses and institutions don’t need a lot of space to install their own. For example, companies might consider installing solar panels on preexisting spaces, such as parking garage roofs, or even an old farm property, as in the case of a New England college, Stonehill College.
On top of that, a business or institution might not need as much power to achieve their energy-reduction goal, which also means a smaller amount of panels is needed. In the case of Stonehill College, the institution only needed 2.7 megawatts to power a part of its campus.
Regardless of power needs and space requirements, the goal to go green and reduce emissions is entirely possible. Apple is living proof: the company recently announced that its global facilities are powered with 100 percent clean energy, using solar arrays, wind farms and biogas fuel cells.