Update on GVEP in Mexico
by Steven Hunt, Energy Consultant and International Project Manager, Practical Action Consulting.
10 October 2006 - On Thursday 28th September in Mexico City a conference was held entitled The GVEP Renewable Energy Rural Electrification Project for Mexico under the combined banners of the Mexican Secretaria de Energia (SENER), GVEP and the World Bank. The conference marked the culmination and bringing together of the work carried out to date under the GVEP initiative in Mexico and was attended by national and state government representatives as well as the donor community, private sector, academia and NGOs. Presented at the conference were outcomes from a range of studies focussing respectively on institutional, structural, regulatory, social, financial and technical contexts for rural electrification in Mexico, looking both backwards at past experience and forwards to mechanisms and strategies for delivery. Although the conference marked the conclusion of the initiative to date, the sense was very much of a movement forwards to action.
The World Bank are leading a $30M rural electrification project in Mexico which will build on the lessons and recommendations of the GVEP initiative in the country. Delivery of pilot projects through improved institutional and financial mechanisms are being co-ordinated at state, national and international levels leveraging capacity and building understanding through the forums created and studies conducted under the GVEP initiative.
I was at the conference in September on behalf of Practical Action Consulting along with Ms Sarah Outcault to deliver a presentation on Enabling Institutions for Rural Electrification, summarising the results of the study our team conducted on institutional structures for the development of rural electrification projects in the four southern states of Chiapas, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Guerrero.
Through an analysis of existing and evolving structures at state and national levels in Mexico along with international experience, we were able to identify key institutional principles leading to recommendations for structures in each state to promote rural electrification. In developing these recommendations we were aware of both the general and country specific challenges faced in undertaking work like this. These include the challenge of supporting existing local institutional initiatives while trying to instigate necessary changes to unlock barriers to rural electrification. This reflects the underlying challenge of encouraging meaningful local autonomy in state level institutions while promoting common standards of performance and sharing of best practices.
The study also had to strike a balance between not creating new bodies unnecessarily with the recognition that responsibility for promoting rural electrification must not fall through the institutional cracks. Rural electrification cannot be just a part-time mandate, but must be driven by an institution with adequate institutional focus, capacity and authority to make things happen.
This principle is important even if making things happen for a local or national government mainly implies fostering an environment within which private sector, co-operative or NGO actors finally deliver services in rural areas. 
Competing notions exist in the world between private, public and civil society led delivery mechanisms for rural services. In reality experience in general and analysis in this case shows that it is not a case of choosing between these sectors, but trying to ensure that each is represented within development and decision making processes, and that each plays the facilitating role the others need to enable progress.
There is no magic institutional structure to achieve this but the GVEP initiative in Mexico and elsewhere has since its inception helped identify some of these key principles and how they might be applied across sectors to enable increased energy access. Times, politics and emphases change but the need for effective and representative governing institutions remains, no matter who is delivering the power.
Steven Hunt
Energy Consultant and International Project Manager
Practical Action Consulting (formerly ITC)
E-mail: Steven.Hunt@practicalaction.org.uk