Mexican president inaugurates first phase
of EURUS wind farm
On 22. 01. 2009 Mexican president Felipe Calderón celebrated the development of the EURUS wind farm project (Fig. 1) eady underway, which will have 250 megawatts (MW) of power production capacity that will be consumed mainly by CEMEX. The wind farm represents an investment of 550 million US$ (approximately 427 million Euro) by the Spanish company ACCIONA.
The EURUS wind farm (Fig. 2) is a self-generation project to supply 25 % of CEMEX Mexico’s needs. It has been developed jointly between CEMEX and ACCIONA Energia and will have 167 wind turbines with 1.5 MW of capacity each, built by ACCIONA Windpower. It is located in Juchitan, in the Southern Mexican State of Oaxaca in a 2,500 hectare area in the Tehuantepec Isthmus, an area well-known for its wind resources.
The energy that will be produced by EURUS is estimated to be sufficient to power a Mexican city of half a million inhabitants, reducing CO2 emissions by approximately 600 thousand metric t/a, which is approximately 25 % of the total emissions generated by such a community. EURUS will be one of the largest wind farms in the world and the second largest in terms of emissions reduction registered under the Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations (Kyoto Protocol). It will also have one of the largest emission reduction indexes per installed capacity in the world.
The project has created more than 850 jobs in the region during the construction phase and will have a local economic impact equivalent to 20 million Mexican pesos per year. The first phase will be operational in the first quarter of 2009 and the last phase will be operational in the last quarter of 2009. Currently 25 turbines are installed (Fig. 3). The wind farm represents a major contribution towards the global effort that CEMEX is making to reduce its impacts and to become more sustainable.
Lorenzo H. Zambrano (Fig. 4), Chairman and CEO of
CEMEX, said: “At CEMEX we are committed to innovation and to becoming more sustainable by the use of alternative fuels, and the application of more efficient processes to save energy, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and to contribute to a clean environment. We are determined to include renewable sources of electricity into our energy mix, and therefore today we feel very proud of our alliance with ACCIONA, so that the EURUS wind farm can begin to transform the power of the wind into electric power.” Esteban Morras, board member of ACCIONA, said: “EURUS is the largest wind farm installed by our company in the world and represents a huge impulse for the development of wind power in Mexico. This country has great potential for wind development and should take advantage of this in the necessary transition toward a more sustainable energy model, creating with it wealth and employment in a sector of the future.” He also expressed his satisfaction with the collaboration with CEMEX in this project. “CEMEX is a great company and we are delighted to work with it on this important initiative.”
www.cemex.com
