Mexico's new NDCs deemed ‘critically insufficient’ amid State support for fossil fuels

Scientific group Climate Action Tracker said Mexico's new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Climate Accord will result in higher emission levels that its previous valid filing, from 2016.

"Mexico's climate policies continue to go backwards, as fossil fuel use is prioritized and climate-related policies and institutions dismantled," the agency wrote in its latest assessment of the country.

The new targets, which were presented at the COP27 summit in Egypt last month, would breach Mexico's Paris agreement commitments as well as its own set of climate change laws. They also have opaque accountability rules for some of its targets, according to Climate Action Tracker.

At the summit, Mexico pledged to double its renewable generation capacity by 2030 as part of a broader policy shift. But since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018, climate change issues have been superseded by other policy priorities.

Among the concerning policies of the current administration highlighted by the Climate Action Tracker report are strong support for the hydrocarbons production and refining industry, including subsidies and public investment for big projects like the Olmeca refinery in Tabasco state. The State has used funds budgeted as "climate mitigation and adaptation" to invest in natural gas infrastructure, the report said.

The government has also eliminated its climate change fund as part of a broader move against independent trust funds that belong to the State, and dissolved the national institute for climate change. Last year, it tried twice to reform the energy sector to prioritize the dispatch of state-owned fossil fuel-based generation over cleaner energy sources.