Mexico, US Plan Clean-Energy Hub Along Border, AMLO Says

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico and the US are working on ambitious plans to turn parts of the border region into a clean energy hub, replete with solar and wind plants, lithium mining and electric vehicle factories, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday.

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Mexico is looking to build five large solar plants, to help remodel car factories for electric vehicles and produce batteries and semiconductors in the state of Sonora, which shares nearly 600 kilometers (370 miles) of border with the US, Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, said at a daily press conference.

“Mexico has a real future due to this because it has unbeatable conditions,” Lopez Obrador said. “In just one state it has all these possibilities.”

Lopez Obrador is hoping for US help with the “Sonora Plan,” which he said President Joe Biden might sign in a visit to Mexico in December or January.

Mexico has also been working with Biden’s top climate diplomat John Kerry, who made the latest of several trips to Mexico last weekend, on a “really, really very important” plan to “generate more wind and solar energy and to drive the modernization of hydroelectricity,” Lopez Obrador said, giving few details on the project.

Lopez Obrador said he is examining a lithium mining concession given to Chinese firm Ganfeng Lithium Co. before Mexico nationalized its resources of the metal. “We are looking at this because we want the law to be applied. They can say it’s not valid to apply it retroactively, but lithium now belongs to the nation, to Mexicans,” he said.

Ford Motor Co. and other car companies with plants in Mexico are interested in the idea of converting their factories to make electric vehicles, Lopez Obrador said.

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