Mexico Elects First Woman President (Yay!) She's A Climate Scientist Too (YAY!)
Mexico Elects First Woman President (Yay!) She's A Climate Scientist Too (YAY!)
Mexico's state-owned oil and utility companies have resisted decarbonizing. That looks likely to change.
Mexico elected former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum president on Sunday. When she takes offices, she’ll become Mexico’s first woman president, its first Jewish president, and its first climate scientist to be president, too. As far as we know, that also makes Mexico the first country in the world to elect a climate scientist as head of state — but just watch, now I’ll find out that Iceland or some Pacific island nation facing inundation did that already.
Sheinbaum’s election is likely a very good thing for climate policy in Mexico. She will succeed Andrés Manuel López Obrador (sometimes shortened to “AMLO” even if that sounds more like a company than a person), who pushed for Mexican “energy sovereignty” through support for fossil fuels, especially the state-owned oil company Pemex and the state-owned utility CFE. As Climate Home News points out, Mexico’s action on climate has been held back in part by
building a $15 billion oil refinery in Tabasco and closing off options for private investment in renewable energy. […]
Mexico is one of only two G20 countries not to have set net zero emission targets, and the climate plan it announced last year at Cop27 was criticised by Climate Action Tracker for being worse than its previous one.
Sheinbaum campaigned on a pledge to continue López Obrador’s expansive and very popular social safety net programs, but she is positioned to offer a significant contrast to her predecessor on energy. While she has said she will keep Mexican oil production at its current rate, about 2 million barrels of oil per day, she has a much greener record than López Obrador; she was a contributor to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and as mayor of Mexico City, she pushed for more rooftop solar, better bicycle infrastructure, and built a new all-electric public transportation line.
And as Kate Aronoff notes at The New Republic, Sheinbaum’s campaign platform included some excellent climate planks, including
a goal to have 50 percent of Mexico’s electricity demand met through zero-carbon sources by 2030, using a mix of wind and solar as well as hydroelectric and geothermal power; investing $13.6 billion in renewable energy; adding nearly 2,400 miles of transmission lines; and expanding on her work as mayor of Mexico City in expanding electrified mass transit via buses and passenger trains.
Her campaign argues the state-owned energy company, Pemex, can drive the transition away from oil, too, according to Alonso Romero, the campaign’s “energy ambassador of dialogues for transformation,” and can you imagine a US campaign having a job title like that? Again, here’s Aronoff:
In renegotiating Pemex’s debt, Sheinbaum has stated that she intends for its long-term plans to include new investments in lower-carbon lines of business. “In the face of climate change,” she said last month, “Pemex has to enter new markets.”
A Sheinbaum government, Romero told me during our conversation last Saturday, will emphasize coordination among Mexico’s state-owned firms so as to best play to their strengths. Mexico, for instance, has massive geothermal energy reserves, which can be accessed with drilling techniques already utilized by Pemex workers and engineers. That zero-carbon power could then be used for green hydrogen development in partnership with CFE, which can leverage its own expertise in scaling up wind and solar power.
One good thing about being state-owned: Despite their prior emphasis on fossil fuels, Pemex and CFE are also more able to make the shift to greater renewable capacity without shareholders screaming about losing profits.
“It’s cheaper and more efficient to implement these policies through state-owned companies,” Romero told me. “We believe that state-owned companies have a longer-term horizon that can sustain these kinds of investments. Sometimes private companies don’t, or the investment and return horizons are not within the range that investors are expecting, so they need to be incentivized and subsidized[.]”
We definitely like the sound of that! And as Aronoff adds,
There’s evidence to back up that approach, even if it might seem a bit alien in the U.S. Researchers at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research found that state-owned utilities in the European Union had a “significantly higher tendency” to invest in renewables than their private-sector counterparts.
We’re in a weird place in this transition to clean energy: The world needs to get off the fossil fuel teat as rapidly as possible, and finally, after decades of letting fossil fuel interests dominate, the US and even China, along now with Mexico, are ramping up renewable power far more quickly than at any point since scientists said we need to decarbonize.
That’s terrific, but at the same time we’re also seeing record production of oil in the US, China is only now starting to throttle down its expansion of coal plants, and Mexico, like most oil-producing nations (including the US), isn’t talking about cutting oil production just yet, although of course its plans to greatly expand renewables will make its overall energy mix cleaner.
As several analysts argue, renewable energy is now becoming so cheap that in much of the industrial world, it makes sense to argue for the transition away from oil primarily as an economic issue. In the next few decades, fossil fuels appear to be on track to put themselves out of business on the basis of cost, though waiting for that to happen on its own would still have disastrous consequences for global warming, so we need to keep pushing the energy transition forward.
All we have to do is elect leaders who are committed to that, and keep fascists from trying to turn it all back. Easy peasy!
[Climate Home News / TNR / AP]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber. But if you prefer to make a one-time donation, this button will do that efficiently and without melting any permafrost. As far as we know.
“𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦-𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴,” 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘰 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘦. “𝘞𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦-𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳-𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴. 𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵, 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥[.]”
Just in case no one else has non-commented on this...
GAHHH!!1!!!1!! SOSHULIZMS!!11!!1!
" it makes sense to argue for the transition away from oil primarily as an economic issue."
So what you're saying is that we're not seeing a change in how society functions, the outcomes just happen to coincide with the smart thing to do. That's... not a good sign for the long term future. We're one invention that makes coal cheaper away from a switch to coal plants.