Mexico has set a series of ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emission goals in response to climate change concerns. My research focuses on the implications these goals have on the development of Mexico’s energy generation portfolio. I examine the generation expansion planning (GEP) problem in the Mexican Electrical Grid while considering national emissions goals. I evaluate expansion plans for reaching Mexico’s emissions goals, while recognizing the difficulties of decision making under the deep uncertainty that this problem presents. In this work, an expansion plan refers to the expansion for generation, transmission and secondary systems over the planning period (2016-2050). Each expansion plan will also have its own production plan which dictates which generation plants are generating electricity and how much. From this, I identify robust policies and expansion pathways for the development of the electrical system.  The main goals for this research project are to: 1) look at how Mexico’s national climate change goals affect the development of its electrical grid, complementing high level top down studies with a bottom up approach using a detailed model of the Mexican grid (PEGyT), 2) study what implications each expansion plan will have on a carbon storage networks, and 3) incorporate multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to evaluate what expansion plans are the most sustainable.

Rodrigo is from Guadalajara, Mexico where he studied Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of Guadalajara, after which he worked for 3 years in the aerospace industry at GE Aviation on FEM and rotordynamic analysis. In 2014 Rodrigo was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for his PhD studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently a fifth year PhD student in Industrial Engineering. His research is focused on energy planning and development. He is currently studying how Mexico’s national climate change goals affect the development of its generation portfolio within the electrical grid.