Leaders of Mexico’s state power utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) on Tuesday blamed renewable energy and a brush fire for a massive Dec. 28 power outage that took 8,696 MW of electricity offline, causing about one-third of the country to lose power. 

Bartlett

Spokesman Luis Bravo Navarro said that while it’s normal for small sections of transmission lines to fail due to force majeure causes, the blackout in Mexico was more widespread due to an “excess of intermittent generation.”

Bravo said that Mexico’s intermittent generation capacity, presumably a reference to wind and solar farms, is expected to double in the near future, based on the projects that have been approved by the Comisión Reguladora de Energía (CRE), which oversees permitting and regulations in...