Mexicali in Mexico is popularly known as “the city that captured the sun.” This desert city bordering the US is home to Yolanda Hernández. Her family is currently torn between paying expensive electricity bills, or putting their health at risk.
Hernández lives with her partner and her 21-year-old son Angel, who has a developmental delay. The family lives in the Ángeles de Puebla neighbourhood, a low-income area. Most of the houses here were built by The Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit), which also provides affordable mortgages.
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This story is part of Dialogue Earth’s work on the Community Adaptations to City Heat (CATCH) project, in partnership with Boston University. The project is funded by Wellcome. All Dialogue Earth content is editorially independent.
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Every summer, Mexicali records the highest temperatures in Mexico. In August 2025, the mercury hit a record 52.7C. To cope with the heat, Hernández uses air conditioning throughout the home, pushing her electricity bills up to MXN 3,000 (USD 177) a month.
The family’s monthly income of MXN 6,000 soon proved insufficient to cover the cost of electricity, the MXN 1,000-a-month psychological therapy sessions for her son, and other essential living expenses.
“It was difficult to pay [the electricity bills]; I couldn’t afford the therapy,” Hernández tells Dialogue Earth.
Families like hers are the target of the Solar Roofs for Wellbeing programme, announced in March 2025 by President Sheinbaum. This initiative aims to tackle energy poverty by subsidising solar panel home installations for households with vulnerable members. For example, minors, the elderly, single mothers and people with disabilities.
One year after the programme began operations, Dialogue Earth heard from several sources that it is having a positive impact on the economy and family health. But some say it will not be enough to eradicate energy poverty in the country’s hottest city.
Bills, bills, bills
Hernández signed up for the solar programme in July 2025, drawn by the promise of cheaper electricity. That November, local authorities came to install the panels. “I thought it was all a lie, but I was actually selected. My electricity bill has gone down a lot.” Hernández is now paying MXN 500-1,000 a month, rather than highs of 3,000.
In response to Dialogue Earth’s freedom of information request, the Ministry of Social Welfare for Baja California (the state that encompasses Mexicali) said the programme had benefited 5,134 families across Mexicali and the city of San Felipe between March 2025 and July 2026: “Beneficiary families in Baja California have managed to reduce their annual electricity expenditure by up to 60% on average, achieving savings of up to 85% during the months of peak consumption in summer.”
This May, state authorities announced the launch of the programme in 5,000 homes in the city of Hermosillo, Sonora state, 700 km south-east of Mexicali.
Campaigners and academics warn many vulnerable families are yet to benefit from the scheme. They say the programme needs to be complemented by other measures, such as greater energy bill subsidies and the replacement of old household appliances with newer, more energy efficient models.
Health and extreme heat
The Hernández family have had air conditioning since they arrived in Mexicali 20 years ago. Over that time, there have been several occasions when the family’s electricity was cut off after failing to pay the bill. Without air conditioning, temperatures in the home become dangerous for Angel and Hernández’s partner, who works as a gardener in the sun all day.
“My son’s mental development is at half his actual age, so for him, the heat is like putting a child out in the sun,” she explains. “He gets distressed and restless; we had to give him a bath every so often to cool him down.”
The human body regulates its internal temperature to around 37C, via the evaporation of sweat when temperatures rise. When the body absorbs more heat than it can release, this causes heat stress, which can lead to anything from dizziness and fainting to kidney damage and death.
Between late March (the start of north Mexico’s 2026 hot season) and early September, Baja California recorded 56 heat-related deaths. The vast majority were attributed to heat stroke, and three to dehydration.
In addition to the solar panel programme, the city has launched initiatives such as the installation of hydration points to prevent heat-related deaths. But government initiatives are up against the reality of more frequent extreme weather events as the planet warms. Since Mexico’s General Climate Change Law was introduced in 2012, the state has warned that the extremely high temperatures experienced in Mexicali will have major impacts on public health, productivity and energy consumption.
Boston benefits from power prescriptions
Mexico is not the only country where solar panels have been identified as a health protection strategy for vulnerable communities.
Patricia Fabián, associate director of the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University in the US, agrees that initiatives to subsidise solar panels yield significant health benefits.
The non-profit Boston Medical Center runs the Clean Power Prescription programme. Under this initiative, solar panels on the medical centre’s roof generate energy credits, which are then granted to low-income patients to lower their bills at home.
Solar projects have also been developed in other US cities, including Phoenix in the state of Arizona. Here, the local government partnered with Solar United Neighbours to install renewable energy systems in 10 homes between 2023 and 2024. Electricity savings amount to an average of approximately USD 1,000 a year per household.
An assessment of the Phoenix project found it helped participants to keep their homes cool without worrying about cost. Participants said they felt “proud to be part of the solution to climate change”, too.
Near Boston, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a pioneering, community-led solar microgrid is under development, ideated by the environmental justice group GreenRoots and managed by the city. The project uses hundreds of solar panels to help power key city buildings, and the system could ultimately benefit low-income households struggling with energy bills, too.
Fabián adds that, currently, solar panels and other energy savings are largely discussed in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions – the potentially massive direct health benefits are being overlooked.
Extreme heat, no electricity
Activists and academics in Mexicali hope the city’s solar panel programme is able to grow and improve, to reach more households experiencing energy poverty.
Gabriela Muñoz Meléndez, a lecturer of urban studies and the environment at Mexico’s Northern Border College (Colef), says the solar panel programme must overcome the challenges previously faced by similar Mexicali initiatives. She has analysed the Valle de las Misiones programme, launched in 2007, which provided 220 social housing units with solar power and insulation. She says some simply ended up using the panels as tables, while others opted for “stealing the copper”.
Muñoz Meléndez suggests building inventories of all the household appliances implicated in the scheme, followed by upgrading lower efficiency items – thus reducing energy consumption in the first place. She also advises both structural and circuitry checks to ensure each home can practically support solar panels.
The need is clear. Up to 46.6 million Mexicans live in energy poverty, which includes 18% of households concentrated along the border with the US, according to Ministry of Energy analysis published in 2022.
Sergio Tamai García leads the Mexicali Civic Front (FCM). The citizens’ group has compiled more than 600 complaints this year from residents over what Tamai calls “crazy” electricity bills.
Mexico’s electricity tariffs were set decades ago by the National Water Commission, based on the average temperature data. The average temperature for Mexicali was set at 33C but since then, the city’s average temperature has been predicted to rise by 1.7-1.9C between 2010 and 2039.
Tamai tells Dialogue Earth he is attempting to arrange talks with the federal authorities, to request a reduction in the electricity tariff for Mexicali that better reflects its temperatures.
One of the “crazy bills” that García was sent amounted to 90,000 pesos, in a city where the minimum wage is MXN 441 a day.
These sky-high bills leave some families unable to pay. And even though the temperature spiked at 51.9C in July, “power cuts are still being carried out,” according to Tamai. This seriously risks the health of those who cannot cool down.
Happily, the current outlook for Hernández and her solar-powered family is positive: “With these savings, we have more money from my partner’s salary for food, for grocery bills and for taking my son to therapy.”
For Hernández and other similarly fortunate Mexicans, solar power has meant they can now harness the ultimate source of heat as a way to keep cool – in the city that captured the sun.
