Data-center law in Mexico

Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente (LGEEPA), art. 28

Applies to both

Article 28 requires a person who intends to carry out a listed work or activity to obtain the Secretaría's prior environmental-impact authorisation. The listed categories include, at fracción II, the electric industry generally alongside petroleum, petrochemical, chemical, steel, paper, sugar, and cement industries, so an electric-generation facility built for a data centre's own supply falls within this category regardless of size.

Fracción XIII is a residual category reaching any federally-competent work or activity that could cause serious and irreparable ecological imbalance, harm to public health or ecosystems, or exceed the limits set by applicable environmental-protection provisions.

Article 171 backs the authorisation regime with an administrative fine of 30 to 50,000 days of the general minimum wage in effect when the sanction is imposed, temporary or permanent closure, administrative arrest of up to 36 hours, and suspension or revocation of the permit or authorisation, among other sanctions the Secretaría may impose.

The law does not name a data centre specifically; the electric-industry category at fracción II reaches a data centre's own generation or cogeneration installation without regard to its capacity.

Source: Full text of law

Ley del Sector Eléctrico (LSE) Nueva Ley publicada en el Diario Oficial de la Federación el 18 de marzo de 2025, arts. 16 a 19, 30, 184 a 188

Effective 2025-03-19 · Applies to both

Article 16 lets the State, private parties, or a mixed-investment scheme generate electricity. Article 17 organises generation into distributed generation, self-consumption (autoconsumo), and generation for the wholesale electricity market. Article 19 requires every electric plant with installed capacity of 0.7 MW or more to hold a valid generation permit issued by the Comisión Nacional de Energía (CNE); a plant below that threshold is an exempt generator and needs no generation permit.

Article 30 defines self-consumption as electricity a plant of 0.7 MW or more produces to meet the on-site needs of the permit holder, which is the category a data centre installing its own generation or backup capacity would fall into once it reaches that threshold.

Article 184 sets the sanctions regime: infractions such as obstructing CENACE's instructions or breaching accounting-separation duties draw a fine of 10 percent of the infractor's gross income in the prior year; other listed infractions draw fines expressed in multiples of the Unidad de Medida y Actualización (UMA), for example 128,000 to 514,000 UMA for failing to timely provide required information, and 26,000 to 128,000 UMA for wrongfully suspending electricity supply to a final user.

Article 187 fines any other infraction not otherwise listed with 1,000 to 10,000 UMA. Article 188 lets the CNE revoke a permit in addition to imposing a fine.

Source: Full text of law