Measure is One of the Developing World’s Most Comprehensive Emissions Reduction Schemes
Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
04/27/12
Mexico’s Congress cleared a comprehensive climate change law late last week, passing the world’s second legally binding unilateral emissions reduction scheme. Once signed by outgoing President Felipe Calderón, the measure will require the country to reduce its CO2 emissions to 30 percent below business-as-usual levels by the end of the decade and 50 percent by 2050. It will also establish a renewable electricity standard of 35 percent by 2024, phase out fossil fuel subsidies and encourage the creation of a voluntary CO2 credit trading scheme for the country’s largest industrial emitters. The legislation passed the country’s Senate unanimously and its lower chamber on a 128-10 margin after being considered on and off for the last three years. The measure had faced stiff opposition from the steel and cement industries, but ultimately passed as Mexico faced one of its most severe droughts in decades.
The measure establishes mandatory emissions reporting from companies, creates a new agency to execute the climate law and requires government agencies to get more of their electricity from renewables. Mexican press reports indicated that the country plans to rely heavily on wind power in order to meet its renewable electricity standard. Some accounts have said that the country has the potential to generate more than 70 GW of electricity annually from wind, particularly from the southern state of Oaxaca. Geothermal and solar are also expected to play sizable roles. The country had a net generation of 46 billion KWh of electricity from renewables in 2010, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
Mexico Second to Adopt Binding Standard
The measure is one of the world’s strictest national climate laws on the books to date. Mexico is second country behind the United Kingdom to make its unilateral greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitments legally-binding. The U.K.’s measure passed in 2008 and requires an 80 percent emissions reduction of greenhouse gases below 1990 levels by 2050. Mexico has been a strong advocate for binding emissions reduction treaties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in recent years. However, domestic action was fueled in part by the failure of nations to hammer out a successor Treaty to the Kyoto Protocol beginning in 2013.
Mexico, however, will have to reconcile its pledges under the law with the fact that it is still a developing country with a large transportation sector that is harder to decarbonize than the electricity sector, which has larger point sources of emissions. Multiple energy statistic agencies also list Mexico in the world’s top 15 CO2 emitters. Concerns have also surfaced about the level of enforcement the government would be able to provide in order to give the measure full legal force given the government’s historic weakness in the area. This will soon be signed into law, but the regulatory components are still lacking, and that’s something we need to work on in order to get people to comply,” Hilda Martínez Salgado, manager for air quality and climate change at EMBARQ Mexico, a World Resources Institute program that advocates for sustainable transport in Mexico, told GHG. “If you don’t have strong regulations that support this law, enforcement will be more difficult.”
Green Groups Cheer Legislation
Environmental groups were quick to cheer the bill’s passage. “We think it’s a good law because it will allow the government to meet its mitigation goals finalized [under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change summits] in Copenhagen and Cancun,” Martínez Salgad said. “They are achievable, but they really need to work in the different sectors.” Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the legislation marks a “clear sign” that nations are acting to fulfill their UNFCCC emissions reduction pledges, but underscored that more work will be needed. “After President Felipe Calderón signs the bill into law, it will be critical for the Mexican government to follow through by implementing new policies and incentives to meet the aggressive objectives outlined in the law. This law sends a clear signal that these reforms will be implemented now and into the future,” he said in a blog post.
But industry groups remained in opposition to the measure. The industry group Canacintra called the law “ambiguous” on its website and said it had “undefined hidden costs” that would hurt industry and the country’s economy.
