For Mexico’s President, the Future Is not Renewable Power – It is Coal – Watts Up With That?
From the Los Angeles Times
It seems to have tormented writers in LA times to write this piece. Emphasis on me.
The president has stopped new renewable projects, ridiculed wind farms as “fans” polluting the landscape, and poured money into the state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, including $ 9 billion to build a new refinery. Last month, he pushed for laws requiring the power grid to first source electricity from state-owned facilities, most of which run on crude oil and coal. from less expensive wind and solar energy.
While the environmentalists admit they’re upset, the writers try not to just exonerate him as an evil denier.
López Obrador’s devotion to fossil fuels and rejection of clean energy at a time when most nations are moving in the opposite direction has dismayed environmentalists warning that Mexico is failing to meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement as well as business can executives warning that energy costs will rise because coal and gas cost about twice as much as wind and solar.
Experts say his policies are rooted less in denialism of climate change than in nationalism and nostalgia
As a populist, López Obrador plays with Mexico’s proud history as a fossil fuel power station.
He grew up in the oil-rich Tabasco state in the decades after President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated the assets of foreign energy companies operating in Mexico and nationalized the country’s oil reserves and mineral wealth. For decades, the state-owned oil company Pemex was a major driver of the Mexican economy.
It remained part of national lore, even if mismanagement and aging infrastructure eventually undermined the country’s position as a top oil producer.
Heh “experts say” ^
It looks like Obrador is working for Mexican prosperity and nationalism. We can’t have that.
Lisa Viscidi, energy expert at the US think tank Inter-American Dialogue, said the president’s goal is to “return their monopolies” by bringing the energy sector under state control – even if that means promoting dirtier fossil fuels and contributing more carbon emissions.
“All of these things have been sacrificed for the goal of energy sovereignty,” she said.
Dozens of renewable energy companies have filed lawsuits to stop the changes they say are wrongly suppressing them. López Obrador has announced that he may introduce a constitutional amendment to achieve his goals.
Mexico’s president appears to be able to hold its own against Big Green.
But the president seems to be enjoying his role as climate pariah. He has dismissed concerns about the environmental impact of his plans from his political opponents and the nation’s elite as a “sophistic”.
“Since when have conservatives been concerned about the environment?” he said at one of his daily press conferences in January. “They have taken the flag of clean energy as well as the flag of feminism or human rights.”
When he was talking about reactivating a coal-fired power station in northern Coahuila last fall, he slapped several dozen US lawmakers who had published a letter criticizing his energy policy for favoring state-owned companies in Mexico.
“I am very happy to be here … to tell those who defend neoliberal politics that we will not take a step back,” he said.
His cause was unexpectedly compounded in February when a Texas winter storm turned off power. The state governor banned the export of natural gas, leaving more than 4 million people without electricity in Mexico, which relies heavily on natural gas from the United States
López Obrador said it was a clear signal: “We have to produce.”
The full article is here, paywalled. I used a “private window” and slipped through.
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