The defeat of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s bid to enshrine state control of the electricity sector in the country’s constitution has brought scant comfort to green-energy advocates, who expect he will continue pushing statist, fossil-fuel-oriented electric power policies. Following a heated, 12-hour debate in the lower house of Congress on April 17, the constitutional reform failed to receive the two-thirds majority needed for passage. The reform, framed as a matter of national sovereignty, would have reversed elements of the historic 2013 opening of Mexico’s energy sector. That opening not only ended the 76-year state oil monopoly, spurring private energy projects; it also brought renewable-power incentives, attracting billions of dollars of foreign investment in wind and solar farms to help rein in carbon emissions. The defeat of the reform, however, brought only partial relief to green-energy advocates, who expect López Obrador... [Log in to read more]