Project support desks: what Jalisco can do

Bajío Ventures · October 2026

The federal government has opened its single windows (ventanillas) for energy. None of them covers what the state and the municipalities decide. That stretch — land use, licences, rights of way, dialogue with the grid operator — is the one a state government can put in order. Jalisco did it this year for industrial parks. It has yet to do it for energy.

Three federal windows, one shared limit

Window	What it resolves	Reference time limit
Self-Consumption Single Window (VUA), May 2026	Self-consumption projects of 0.7 to 20 MW: social impact (SENER), interconnection studies (CENACE), permit (CNE) and contracts (CFE), in one shared file	Social impact: up to 20 business days. Studies: 30 business days, 10 in the fast-track mode. Permit: up to 30 business days
Strategic Projects Single Window (VUPE)	Registration, tracking and notifications for the binding-planning calls for projects	Those of each call
Plan México investment platform, 4 May 2026	Federal authorisation of priority investments	30 days for priority projects; 90 days for the rest, with deemed approval

The Ventanilla Energía portal gathers 369 procedures from 45 administrative units. All of them are federal.

None of these windows replaces the local layer: land use and the construction licence, which are municipal; environmental impact when it falls to the state; water feasibility; civil protection; and rights of way for lines. The telecommunications sector has just measured the same problem: a single deployment can require up to 20 state and municipal permits, with an average resolution time of 1.4 years, according to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT). IMCO said it of Plan México: simplification depends on coordination between levels of government, which has been the weakest link.

Why it matters to Jalisco

• Jalisco generates 64.6% of the energy it consumes, according to El Economista (December 2025). Academic estimates put the deficit higher.
• It ranks first in the country in distributed generation: 90,876 contracts and 658.8 MW. Small projects do move forward.
• Large ones do not. The first federal call for private projects (December 2025) approved 20 projects in 11 states, with 3,320 MW. None is in Jalisco.
• The storage call assigns 20 of 935 MW to the entire Occidental region. In the mixed-development schemes, the region obtained roughly 310 of the 1,540 MW required.
• The combined-cycle plant that CFE announced for the metropolitan area (934 MW) was put on hold in December 2025 for lack of transmission, according to El Informador.
• Three transmission lines for Guadalajara entered the 2026 federal budget, according to Sedes. One has been pending since 2016.

The reading is the one we made for the country in Permitting is no longer the problem: the constraint is the grid. But the grid also has to be permitted, and a good part of that permitting is local.

What Jalisco already has

• A promise. In January 2025, the new Ministry of Sustainable Energy Development (Sedes) announced a “specialised window for energy procedures” covering municipal, state and federal permits, together with a portfolio of 20 projects worth more than USD 2 billion. In our review of public sources, as of October 2026, we found no guidelines, portal or agreement that puts it into operation.
• A legal basis. The law of the Jalisco State Energy Agency (2016) already empowers it to act as a liaison for projects, help structure them, serve as the link with regulators and operators, and advise municipal governments (article 3, sections XIII, XVII, XXII and XXIV).
• A proven recipe. On 15 April 2026, the state presented its Regulatory Facilities Strategy for industrial parks: from more than 700 to 200 business days, from 156 to 86 requirements, a single file and six harmonised procedures in eight municipalities. The municipalities keep the decision to approve or reject.
• A useful neighbour. CENACE’s Occidental Regional Control Office is based in Zapopan. No other state in the region has the technical counterpart in its own metropolitan area.

What other states are doing

• Guanajuato: the working table. The Ministry of Economy tracks 14 projects totalling 1,731 MW at a working table with CENACE and CFE’s regional office.
• Yucatán: the liaison. In April 2026, its office in Mexico City agreed follow-up mechanisms with SENER’s technical areas for its priority projects.
• Tamaulipas: the agreement. In September 2026 it signed a single window for fuel stations with 11 municipalities. Those municipalities hold 81% of the state’s stations.

These are three different directions: towards the grid operator, towards the federal government and towards the municipalities. A complete support desk needs all three.

Seven things Jalisco can do

1. Sign a single energy file with the municipalities. It is the same mechanism as in April, applied to power plants, storage, substations and lines. It makes sense to start with the eight municipalities that have already signed and add those with the solar resource and the nodes.
2. Publish the catalogue of local procedures by project type. Four routes are enough: distributed generation below 0.7 MW, self-consumption of 0.7 to 20 MW, utility scale, and grid works. With requirements, authority and time limit for each.
3. Assign a case manager to each project. Support is not the same as receiving paperwork. It is one person responsible for the file, with a dashboard that shows on which desk each procedure sits.
4. Open a standing table with CENACE and CFE. With the regional control office in Zapopan and with CFE Transmission and Distribution, to review project by project and work by work.
5. Support the grid first. The project that most needs a support desk is not private. It is the three Guadalajara lines and their substations: rights of way, municipal permits, crossings and land. Here the state contributes what the federal government does not have.
6. Prepare the territory. Polygons with compatible land use and identified grid capacity, tied to the more than 5,000 hectares of industrial parks the state wants to add.
7. Publish the numbers. Projects in the portfolio, megawatts and days per procedure. CENACE does not publish its interconnection queue; the state can publish its own.

What it cannot do

A state support desk does not grant generation permits, does not allocate grid capacity and does not sign interconnection contracts. Those belong to the CNE, CENACE and CFE. Nor does it change binding planning. What it does is prevent a project with its federal permit resolved from losing a year at the local level, and a budgeted line from stopping at a right of way.

It is not expensive either. The 2026 state budget bill provided 23 million pesos for Sedes, according to El Economista. A support desk is, above all, coordination: agreements, a small team and a dashboard.

The reading

1. The federal window exists; the local one is missing. Federal time limits have come down to weeks. The total project timeline is now set by the stretch nobody coordinates.
2. Jalisco does not have to invent anything. It has the law, the announcement and a recipe it has already applied to industrial parks. The instrument is missing.
3. The best support desk is the one that supports the grid. While the node is saturated, speeding up a plant’s permit only moves the queue. Speeding up a line moves everyone.

For Guanajuato and Querétaro the lesson is the same. They share the regional control office and the same transmission corridors with Jalisco. What one state unblocks on the Occidental grid benefits all three.

Sources: SENER — Notice: Self-Consumption Single Window · DOF — VUA guidelines · Ventanilla Energía · Santamarina + Steta — 2026 call for strategic projects · Expansión — Plan México investment platform · IMCO — Immediate actions for investment · Jentel — CRT digital window · El Economista — Jalisco plans to eliminate its energy deficit by 2030 · El Financiero — 20 renewable projects with private investment · El Informador — Jalisco bets on clean energy · El Informador — Transmission lines missing in Jalisco · El Informador — New transmission lines for Jalisco · Global Energy — Portfolio of 20 projects and specialised window · Organic Law of the Jalisco State Energy Agency · Jalisco TV — Regulatory Facilities Strategy · Periódico AM — Guanajuato, 14 energy projects · Government of Yucatán — Energy agenda · Petróleo & Energía — Tamaulipas single window

This content is for information only and does not constitute legal, regulatory or investment advice. How procedures are split between federal, state and municipal authorities depends on each project’s technology, size and location.

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.