ACCIONA awarded construction of Mexico Supreme Court building

ACCIONA Infrastructures has been awarded the contract for the new building which will house the administrative offices of the Mexico National Supreme Court. The building will be located in the Historic Centre of Mexico City. The project aims to expand and improve the quality of the Supreme Court’s physical infrastructure.

The new facilities will comply with sustainability criteria, be eco-friendly and help improve Mexico City’s Historic Centre, one of the country’s main cultural tourism destinations, with a mix of pre-Hispanic, colonial independent and modern architectures.

The building, delivered as a comprehensive turnkey project for 290.5 million pesos (14.2 million euros), will have seven floors of offices, two basements with 332 parking spaces, a dining room, an auditorium, a multi-purpose hall and a lounge for pensioners, totalling 18.681m² under roof. The project is expected to take 15 months.

Project sustainability measures include the installation of almost 1,000 m²of photovoltaic panels which will generate 12% of the power used by the building and a rainwater treatment plant to reuse it.

Forty years’ experience

ACCIONA opened its first office in Mexico, belonging to the infrastructures division, in 1978. Today, the country is ACCIONA’s only market in the world outside Spain in which the company has major projects in all its business areas: Infrastructures (Building, Water, Industrial and Services), Renewable Energies and other businesses, including real estate (through ACCIONA Parque Reforma real estate company).

ACCIONA’s emblematic projects in the country include Phase 5 of the Baja California Sur power plant, the Jala-Puerto Vallarta road and the first General Hospital of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) in Nogales. The industrial division of ACCIONA Infraestructuras México was selected this year by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to design and build a 117 kilometre power grid to transmit the power generated by the Empalme II combined cycle plant in the States of Sonora and Sinaloa. The project, awarded for 90 million US dollars (85 million euros), is the first construction of a power grid in Mexico assigned to ACCIONA and operated by the CFE. It will be designed and built by the ACCIONA Group companies Instalaciones México, ACCIONA Ingeniería and ACCIONA Industrial.

The  Atotonilco wastewater treatment plant was commissioned in November last year. It is one of the most significant projects in the Mexico Valley basin Water Sustainability Programme and the biggest water treatment plant in the world. It will treat the wastewater of an equivalent population of more than 10 million in Mexico City. The plant is equipped with a cogeneration system using digestion biogas to ensure maximum energy savings.

Four wind farms

ACCIONA Energía currently owns and operates 556.5 MW in Mexico, with four wind farms in Oaxaca that account for 18% of the country’s operational wind power capacity. ACCIONA has also built 302 MW for clients (252 MW in Nuevo León and 50 MW in Oaxaca).The company has several hundred megawatts under development in Mexico, both for itself and for clients. Last year, ACCIONA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) for the promotion of joint renewable energy projects in the country.

In July, ACCIONA Energía signed its first contract with Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) for the delivery of renewable power and clean energy certificates resulting from the energy auctions introduced by Mexico’s energy reforms.  The contract covers the annual supply of 585.7 gigawatt-hours (GWh), which was awarded to ACCIONA in March in the first auction for long-term energy delivery in the wholesale electricity market, organized by the Mexican National Energy Control Centre (CENACE). The award will materialise in a 168 megawatt (MW) wind farm in the State of Tamaulipas, to enter into service in 2018.