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Miguel Ángel Alonso Rubio

Director General, Acciona Energí­a

After Spain, Mexico is the most important country in terms of energy. We are now operating five projects in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. We have a project operating in Nuevo Leon. We have also El Cortijo under construction and Puerto Libertad, while Sonora is in a preliminary stage. We have evolved very much. We used to be a company that had vertically integrated the production of wind generators, but sold this company. We were specialists in EPC. We stay with our know-how, which is the development of renewable energy projects. In the future, we will be present in tenders and try to win projects. In the last 10 years, we have built projects of 812MW. We are capable of starting an average of 100MW every year. Going step by step we are able to fulfill the needs of every project. In our experience, we have learned that it is difficult to take on large projects because of the current conditions of infrastructure, the size of the country, and the complexity of projects.

Leopoldo Rodriguez

Director General, Mexican Wind Power Association (AMDEE)

AMDEE started out just as a group of developers of new projects who were seeking to structure, together with the government, the legal and regulatory framework for the sector. Once this was completed, we started working to attract investment and develop the supply and network. Now, with many wind projects built and others under construction, we are attracting new colleagues from different sectors, including investors, financial institutions, service providers, environmental, legal, and technical consultants, and manufacturers. AMDEE works on the development and growth of the wind power industry in Mexico, but this has many challenges. We have nearly 100 members today and the needs of our group have evolved over time. We have also seen a remarkable evolution in wind power technology since our establishment. Wind technology has advanced to cope with the lower wind profiles found in many Mexican states and it has become extremely competitive, despite the low cost of natural gas as an energy source.

Santiago Paredes

Director General, Santiago Paredes

The energy business is the most strategic for us currently. We seek to do many projects with Pemex. The things it asks for, however, are tough for us. We are not a huge company. We do investments; however, the bonus it was seeking was USD26-28 million. We are not that large yet to be in such business. Instead, we are looking toward solar. We have already hired people to work in that area, although we are still a little skeptical. If we want this project to work, it depends on certain cells; if we can sell the cells to the market, it can work. We are looking into it a great deal. If we consider the three projects we are bidding on now, the investment could reach around USD150 million. The Argentina project is also requiring an investment of around USD140 million. Thus, I do not believe we really have space to invest in too many other areas. The day-to-day business is doing well and growing.

Sergio Alcocer

Chairman of the Board of Directors, Iberdrola Mexico

Iberdrola has bet on Mexico for the long term; we seek to establish lasting agreements with the countries that we are based in, which include Brazil, the US, the UK, and Mexico. We have been here for almost 19 years and were the first and largest client of CFE, the Mexican power utility, in generating electricity for CFE; it is still our best customer. We produce electricity and 80% of what we produce is for CFE. The mix is changing and with the open market now we sell more electricity to the open market with the idea of being the largest producer in the private sector. We are now the largest producer from the private sector. We generate around 15% of total electricity, which means 20 million Mexicans benefit from the electricity being generated by Iberdrola. Over the past few years, Mexico has changed significantly; however, what has not changed is the stability of the country and the long-term growth that we have seen in the internal market.

Juan Ignacio Rubiolo

Director General, AES Mexico

AES was the first independent power producer (IPP) in Mexico. We arrived in 1997, winning the first auction for a private company, for our plant in Merida. Since then, we acquired two other projects in 2007, two plants under the self-supply regime which supply power to Cemex and Peñoles. We have been around for 15 years now and we are redefining our strategy to grow our portfolio in Mexico. We are focusing our efforts in three growth drivers. The first is conventional natural gas power, which includes co-generation plants and combined cycles. The second is renewables, which is key for us, and renewables are complemented with our patented product in energy storage, the large batteries that we have worldwide and that we are now trying to bring to Mexico. Renewables are mainly wind and solar. The third driver is our small-scale LNG facilities. We intend to put up small-scale LNG production facilities to distribute to key segments of the industrial sector. We want to speed up the creation of a greener world.

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