Critics say Mexico’s proposed electricity legislation, part of an effort by President López Obrador to boost the state energy sector, will force the country to overshoot its greenhouse emissions targets. (Photo courtesy of Greenpeace)
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has sent Congress legislation that would strengthen the state’s role in the electricity sector in ways experts say will increase the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and hobble efforts to boost renewable energy. The bill would reverse three constitutional amendments approved in 2013 to open the historically state-controlled energy sector to private participation. It could come up for debate as soon as the current legislative session, which concludes on Dec. 15. Because it would amend the Constitution, the bill must win a two-thirds majority in Congress’s lower house and Senate, then ratification by at least 17 of the nation’s 32 state legislatures to become law. Since his inauguration in 2018, López Obrador has portrayed the 2013 reforms as treasonous. His administration argues that those changes, which spawned incentives for renewable-power developers, unfairly favor private and foreign companies over the state-owned... [Log in to read more]
