The new president of Mexico promises to resume the fight against…

MEXICO CITY (AP) – In the first days of her term as Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum distanced herself from the dependence on fossil fuels promoted by her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and promised to restart the energy transition he had stalled.

“We will increase renewable energy. The goal is for them to have a 45% share (in total electricity production) by 2030,” she said on Tuesday in her first public speech in the capital’s Zocalo square, shortly after being sworn in as the country’s first female president.

Specifics are still scarce, but her speech marks a sharp departure from the energy policies of former President López Obrador, a fierce defender of fossil fuels who, among other things, spent more than $20 billion to build a new oil refinery and halted auctions that allowed developers to build solar and wind farms in the country.

The president announced that in the coming days she would present an “ambitious energy transformation program” aimed at “reducing greenhouse gases that cause climate change.”

But Sheinbaum also promised to strengthen the nation’s Federal Electric Power Commission, which owns older power plants that burn mostly fossil fuels, and state oil company Pemex.

Even without the details, experts and environmentalists said the change in rhetoric is noticeable.

“The terms ‘sustainable development’ and ‘renewable energy’ have never really appeared in López Obrador’s policies, said Rosanety Barrios, who worked for more than a decade at Mexico’s Energy Regulatory Commission. “He has not used this term in any speech or document. And she used it all the time.”

During her campaign, Sheinbaum repeatedly promised to promote renewable energy to meet growing demand for electricity, partly caused by rising temperatures due to climate change. In a speech before Congress, also on Tuesday, with López Obrador sitting a few steps away, the promises seemed more tangible.

According to the Ministry of Energy, the goal of achieving 45% clean electricity by 2030 is well above the 24% it represented last year. If successful, Mexico will once again be on track to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep average global temperatures no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The energy policies promoted by López Obrador have led to Mexico’s rating being downgraded to “critically inadequate” by the Climate Action Tracker, an organization that evaluates actions taken by countries to comply with the Paris Agreement.

In her speech to Congress, the president also announced the country’s first-ever oil production limit – 1.8 million barrels per day. All of Mexico’s crude oil is produced by Pemex, and that’s roughly what the company produced on average in 2023.

That’s much less than the 2.6 million barrels a day promised by López Obrador at the beginning of his term.

Sheinbaum recalled that more than a decade ago, the 2013 energy reform promoted by then-President Enrique Peña Nieto projected production of 3 million barrels per day. “It’s impossible from an environmental point of view,” she said. “It is better to promote efficiency and renewable sources.”

At the same time, however, Sheinbaum promised to “strengthen Pemex” and never criticized the construction of the new Dos Bocas refinery, paying several visits to it with López Obrador.

Experts say that Mexico will not be able to increase oil production using traditional methods because its deposits are exhausted.

“Mexico has ten years of oil left at its current modest production rate. Mexico has almost run out of oil,” said Adrian Fernandez, who holds a PhD in environmental science from Imperial College London and leads the advisory team of the Mexico Climate Initiative.

Still, Fernández praised Sheinbaum’s words “because it means she won’t try to increase oil production.”

Mexico would have to invest heavily in either hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, or deepwater exploration to increase production above current levels, he said. So far, the country has rejected both solutions.

Fernández also stated that Sheinbaum’s speech was “completely consistent with her experience and knowledge.” The president has a doctorate in energy engineering and degrees in physics and was a member of the UN panel of experts on climate change that won the Nobel Prize in 2007.

This week, Sheinbaum saw firsthand the devastation that climate change is wreaking in Mexico. On Wednesday, in her first trip as the country’s leader, she visited Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero to assess the damage caused by Hurricane John, which hit the coast last week first as a hurricane and then again as a tropical storm.

The storm left a trail of destruction as the city was still recovering from last year’s Hurricane Otis. The strength of both hurricanes was increased by rising ocean temperatures caused by global warming.

However, the most important question is whether the new president will be able to achieve her goals within Mexico’s current legal framework. Before leaving office, López Obrador pushed through a constitutional reform that strongly favors the Federal Electricity Commission.

On the one hand, Sheinbaum supported this legal change and promised that the state would retain control of 54% of electricity generation. On the other hand, it said it would again encourage private investment in renewable energy, something the previous government discouraged with regulations favoring the state-owned CFE, which are still in force.

“From my point of view, Claudia’s biggest problem is the uncertainty of the law,” Barrios said.

— The Associated Press’s climate and environment coverage receives financial support from a number of private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for philanthropic engagements, supporters and funding areas on AP.org.