From commitment to project: what Bajío Ventures can do

Bajío Ventures · October 2026 · From commitment to project, 6 of 6

Five posts to reach one question: with everything signed, planned and legislated, what can a regional energy-infrastructure investment company do? This post answers for us. It also serves as a template for any company in the Bajío that wants to move from the SDG logo to a project with a number.

In this series: 1. The MDGs · 2. The SDGs four years from 2030 · 3. What Mexico signed · 4. What the federal government is doing · 5. The Bajío states · 6. What Bajío Ventures can do (this post)

What the series showed, in five lines

1. The MDGs taught that what has an indicator moves. Mexico met 37 of 51 and failed on maternal health and on the environment. Energy had no goal.
2. The SDGs are going badly in the world — 15% of the targets on track — and are middling in Mexico: 75th of 169, no goal met, SDG 9 in red. Nobody has set the national targets.
3. The agreements bind less through the climate treaty than through the customer, the bank and customs: CBAM, reporting standards, USMCA, consultation and access to information.
4. The federal government has a plan and an absolute target for 2035. It also has four different figures for clean energy in 2030 and a climate annex that falls 25% in the 2027 budget.
5. The states do more than is recognised and they do it separately: three carbon prices, two net-zero targets, five water crises and no regional table.

Where the gap is

The commitment is not missing. It is in the NDC, in the state plans and in the revenue laws. The technology is not missing either: anyone can buy a rooftop solar system, a heat pump or a battery today.

What is missing lies in between. It is three things.

Measurement at regional scale. The targets are national and so are the data. Nobody publishes what percentage of the electricity the Bajío consumes is clean, or how many tonnes its industry emits per state with the same method.

Prepared projects. Between a target and a built asset there is a project file: site, interconnection, permits, social impact, buyer and financing. Most medium-sized plants and municipalities have nobody to assemble it.

Aggregation. The Bajío market is a market of small projects. In our estimate of the demand from industry of German origin, 51 plants add up to between 64 and 183 MW of solar, with an average project of about USD 2.6 million. No bank structures that one by one.

All three are intermediation work. It is the work of a company like ours: capital, data and an industrial channel with Germany.

Seven lines of work

#	Originating commitment	Gap in the Bajío	What we can do	How it is measured
1	SDG 7; 38% clean electricity by 2030	26% nationally; 428 MW of clean capacity in Guanajuato	Develop and aggregate on-site generation and storage for industry	MW installed; renewable % of each plant’s consumption
2	SDGs 9 and 12; CBAM; NIS standards	The medium-sized plant has no emissions baseline	Build the baseline by plant with public data and measurement data	Plants with a verifiable inventory
3	SDG 13; state carbon taxes	The tax is paid and does not become a project	Convert the tax bill into a reduction portfolio	Tonnes reduced; pesos of tax avoided
4	SDG 6	Overexploited aquifers; disputed works	No project without a water balance; pumping efficiency and measured agrivoltaics	Cubic metres not extracted
5	Escazú; Article 2; social impact	Information and consultation arrive late	Public project file and shared benefits from the design stage	Projects with a project file published before the permit
6	SDG 17; taxonomy and sustainable bonds	There is thematic money and few eligible projects	Prepare projects for state funds, development banks and private capital	Pesos mobilised per peso of our own
7	SDG 17; binding planning	There is no dashboard and no regional table	Publish an annual dashboard and convene those who decide	Indicators published; actors at the table

1. Clean energy where the load is

It is our core business and the most direct contribution to SDG 7. The current rule favours it: generation without a permit up to 0.7 MW, self-consumption from 0.7 to 20 MW and collective schemes in preparation. We explain it in Residential, C&I and utility.

The grid is the constraint and we do not solve it. What we can do is not depend on it: on-site generation, storage to cut the peak and electrified process heat. The order we propose to each plant is the same: first reduce, then shift the peak, and generate last.

Indicator: MW in operation and the renewable percentage of the consumption of each plant served, reported every year.

2. The baseline the customer will ask for

The NIS standards ask private companies for 30 indicators. Listed issuers have reported under international standards since 2025 and they ask their supply chain. The European importer needs verified data for CBAM. The medium-sized plant in the Bajío receives the three questionnaires and does not have the data.

We have a data platform on the region’s industrial base. The next step is to use it to estimate energy consumption and emissions by plant and by industrial park, and to refine the estimate with measurement where the customer gives access to it. The baseline is not the product; it is the input to lines 1 and 3.

Indicator: plants with a scope 1 and 2 emissions inventory that a third party can verify.

3. From the tax to the project

Querétaro charges 5.9 UMA (Mexico’s official unit of account) per tonne and San Luis Potosí charges 3; Guanajuato has charged since 2023. For a plant with gas boilers, the tax bill is the first cash flow that justifies an efficiency project or a process-heat project. Querétaro also allows a company to offset up to 20% with certified projects within the state.

We can do two things. For the company: translate its tax return into a list of projects ranked by cost per tonne. For state governments: provide evidence of which offset rules generate local projects and which only generate revenue.

Indicator: tonnes of CO₂ equivalent reduced and pesos of tax avoided per peso invested.

4. Water comes first

All five states are failing on SDG 6. We keep the rule we proposed for the Laja River basin: no energy project on farmland is approved unless it shows, with measurement, that the plot extracts less water than before. We also apply it to industry: each project carries its water balance next to its energy balance.

Indicator: cubic metres not extracted, measured at the well.

5. Social licence from the design stage

With Escazú, Article 2 and the social impact statement, a project that informs late is a project open to legal challenge. The practice we propose is simple: a public project file before applying for the permit, and three questions answered in writing — who pays, who benefits, who decides — as we set out in A just energy transition.

Indicator: projects with a project file published before the permit; shared benefits agreed in writing.

6. Prepare projects that someone can finance

The Ministry of Finance has placed USD 34.5 billion in sustainable debt and the development banks have placed MXN 241 billion in thematic bonds. The states have environmental funds. The federal climate annex is falling. The conclusion is the same in all three cases: the money that remains goes to whoever arrives with an eligible project, with a baseline, indicators and the capacity to provide proof.

Our role is preparation: formulate a municipality’s project for a state fund, structure a portfolio of plants for a bank, and contribute our own capital where it is needed for the project to start.

Indicator: third-party pesos mobilised per peso of our own.

7. The dashboard and the table

It is the cheapest line and the one most needed. The indicators exist, scattered across federal and state reports. We propose to bring them together once a year in a Bajío dashboard with few numbers: renewable percentage of consumption, distributed generation, industrial emissions, revenue from carbon taxes and its use, the state of the aquifers and energy spending by the lowest-income households.

The channel with Germany is useful here. The new agreement with the European Union and CBAM mean that the European buyer brings its requirements to the region. We prefer that they arrive with technology and financing, not only with questionnaires.

Indicator: indicators published every year; governments, companies and universities that contribute data.

What is not ours to do

We do not replace the State. The transmission grid, strategic gas storage, bulk water and indigenous consultation are public responsibilities. We can point out where they are missing. We cannot build them.

We do not sell alignment. A project does not “contribute to nine SDGs” because its brochure says so. It contributes to the indicator that it measures and reports. We prefer a project with two verifiable indicators to one with seventeen icons.

We do not promise what depends on others. We do not control interconnection timelines, the pending distributed generation rules or state tax changes. We report them.

The takeaway

1. The gap is not one of ambition; it is one of project files. The country has targets for 2030, 2035 and 2050. It lacks prepared projects at the scale where decisions are made: the plant, the industrial park, the municipality.

2. What binds today is the market. The state tax, the customer’s questionnaire and the data for European customs already have a date. The work starts there, not at the 2027 summit.

3. The lesson of 2000 still holds. The MDGs worked where there was a number, a baseline and a deadline. That is why each of the seven lines carries its indicator. We commit to reporting them.

If you work on any of these fronts — from a plant, a municipality, a state agency or a fund — we want to hear your view.

This note is for information only and is not legal or investment advice, nor an offer of securities. The figures come from posts 1 to 5 of this series, where their sources are cited.

Bajío Ventures — a Mexican energy-infrastructure investment group based in Guanajuato: capital, a data platform on the region’s industrial base, and a German industrial channel, with its own advisory presence in Berlin.