A heat wave has been gripping North America for several weeks. Bill Dawson reports from Texas, where not even the “brutal heat” is bringing about a rethink in climate policy. A look across the border to Mexico also shows little commitment to climate action. Quite the opposite: The country is expanding fossil fuels.
China also does not have a plan – at least as far as methane emissions are concerned. The world’s largest emitter of this climate killer had announced a methane strategy for late 2022, but no paper has yet been presented. The dominance of coal makes the fight against methane emissions more difficult, writes Nico Beckert. And Lukas Scheid explains what the EU’s currently much-discussed Nature Restoration Law has to do with climate action and where the biggest disputes are.
We also look to Germany: While the carbon price is now expected to rise as much as originally envisioned, the national budget may be 500 million euros short for international climate action.
Our news section also shows, among other things, how cleaner shipping fuels global warming. But we also have good news: Despite all the naysaying, the energy and transport transition in Germany are much more popular than expected – if they are planned effectively and fairly.
Despite deadly heat waves across the country, which scientists attribute primarily to global warming, the Mexican government continues to focus its energy policy mainly on oil and gas. While the development of renewables is blocked, the country continues to expand the fossil fuel industry.
Climate targets are being lowered, funds cut, the National Climate Institute will be closed, and fossil fuels will continue to be heavily subsidized. The new climate plan (NDC) will lead to higher emissions in 2030 than the plans from 2016, criticizes the think tank Climate Action Tracker. Its conclusion: “Mexico’s climate policies continue to go backwards”.
Last Friday, crude oil flowed into the newly built Dos Bocas refinery for the first time, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced. Energy Minister Rocío Nahle also announced new plans: “The country needs another refinery.” The transition to renewables is slow all over the world, but the consumption of fuel is rising now, she explained.
And yet the fourth heat wave with temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius is currently rolling across the Central American country. The prolonged drought harms agriculture, and more than a hundred people have already died. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Mexico’s average temperature has increased by 1.43 degrees since 1961. Natural water supplies are shrinking, while rising sea levels are already threatening villages on the Caribbean peninsula of Yucatán.
There is little discussion about the role of intensive domestic oil and gas exploitation in climate change. At 418 million tons (2021), Mexico ranks among the 15 countries with the highest CO2 emissions. And the government announced an ambitious-sounding NDC at COP27: By 2030, emissions are to be cut by 35 percent compared to 1990. Thirty percent are to be achieved with the country’s own resources, and five percent with the help of international cooperation.
However, because the calculation basis has been changed and there is no transparency, emissions in 2030 could be higher than in 2016, despite tighter targets, criticizes the Climate Action Tracker. A court also suspended the 2020 NDC for violating the Paris Agreement and Mexican law for not being ambitious enough. As a result, the think tank downgrades Mexico’s climate policy to “critically insufficient”.
The taste for fossil fuels has its reasons: Since the left-wing nationalist President López Obrador took office in 2018, the government’s energy policy has focused on strengthening the ailing former parastatal oil and gas company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the power utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE). Pemex in particular is popular with many Mexicans. After its nationalization in 1938, the company became a symbol of sovereignty and prosperity in the oil-rich country.
Energy policy is social policy, is what the relevant ministries are saying today. Above all, the population is to be supplied with affordable state-owned fossil energy. But the energy reform of López Obrador’s economically liberal predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto from 2013 is standing in the way. He liberalized the energy market through opening, competition and global integration.
The reform ended the state monopoly of Pemex and CFE and opened the plants to private investors. It also created conditions that allowed companies to invest freely in other private-sector plants and feed their electricity into the CFE grid. This particularly benefited renewable energy projects: solar plants, wind farms, and geothermal energy. Between 2017 and 2022, electricity generation grew by ten percent, almost exclusively through renewables, which expanded by nearly 50 percent. However, between 2021 and 2022, the share of clean electricity dropped from 27.5 to 26.1 percent, according to the political science institute IMCO.
At the same time, López Obrador invested over 17 billion US dollars in Dos Bocas and 600 million US dollars in acquiring a refinery in Texas. He acquired 13 Mexico-based power plants from the Spanish operator Iberdrola for six billion US dollars – with only one being non-fossil.
For López Obrador, the energy reform of his predecessor is a “neoliberal sell-out”. He accuses private investors of receiving preferential treatment and not acting in the public’s interest. Indigenous communities criticized wind farms in Tehehuantepec in the south of the country because, contrary to international law, the population had not been consulted about the project on their land. They also said that the promised cheap electricity had not been provided.
However, Obradore’s attempt to overturn the reform with a constitutional amendment failed in 2022 because it did not obtain the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament. Nevertheless, the government continues to pursue its concept. Authorities in charge of private-sector initiatives pay little attention to the CFE power feed-in, sustainable energy projects are blocked, and tenders are suspended. An independent fund for climate policy has been scrapped and funding has been placed under the control of the government. “This makes it hard to see how the funds are used,” criticizes Carlos Asúnsolo of the environmental organization Cemda.
As a result, the expansion of clean energy production is stagnant. “Many applications for wind farms and solar plants are stalled on various pretexts, there are very few permits,” explains sustainable development expert Victor Ramírez.
The energy ministry already admitted in June 2022 that the target of 35 percent clean electricity in 2024 would not be reached before 2031. Nevertheless, López Obrador announced at an international energy and climate forum in April 2023 that the 2024 target would be met as planned. He referred in particular to four planned wind farms in Tehuantepec and a 1.6-billion-dollar 1,000-megawatt solar park in the northern state of Sonora.
Critics see these projects as proof that the country, which has great potential for wind and solar power, is making progress. “Some private renewable energy projects have been launched in the meantime,” says sustainability expert Ramírez. This is probably mainly due to international pressure: The USA and Canada threatened Mexico with legal action on the grounds that state control of the energy market and discrimination against foreign investors violated the joint trade agreement. Wolf-Dieter Vogel, Mexico City
Despite the most recent dangerous heat wave, the US state of Texas stays the course on energy and climate policy: There is still no robust, explicit debate about manmade climate change – preventing it and preparing for it. Democrats, scientists at top Texas universities, environmentalists and others have tried for years to trigger such a public policy dialog, but Republicans have essentially refused to engage in one.
The brutal heat of recent weeks would suggest that the Texan government might reconsider its longstanding refusal to directly address the threats posed by climate change. Newspapers reported an influx of heat victims to hospital emergency rooms and inmates dying in prisons without air-conditioning.
One recent action by Governor Greg Abbott suggests that won’t happen on his watch. As dangerously high temperatures gripped the state in late June, Abbott signed into law a bill to block Texas cities from requiring 10-minute water breaks every four hours for construction workers. The state’s failure to respond to potentially deadly temperatures in prisons is also a sign that it continues business as usual.
“This year,” the Texas Tribune reported last week in a story about prison deaths, “state lawmakers chose again not to put any money directly toward installing air conditioning in the dangerously hot prisons, despite a 32.7 billion US dollar budget surplus.”
Yet there are clear warnings: Scientists at the nonprofit Climate Central organization said in June that their analysis indicated human-caused climate change made last month’s soaring temperatures in Texas and Mexico “at least five times more likely.” Other researchers had concluded that climate change also made the 2011 drought and 2017’s Hurricane Harvey more devastating in Texas.
Likewise, lawmakers’ inaction was nothing new. For years Texas lawmakers have refused to pass (and in many cases, even to consider in committee hearings) explicit climate-action bills.
Decarbonization and climate resilience are national policy in the US. Week after week, different agencies roll out billions of dollars in grants to pursue those goals. But in many states, especially Republican-controlled ones, efforts proceed to counteract US energy policy with efforts to advance fossil fuels and hamper renewables.
In the Texas Legislature, the nation’s oil and gas capital, there were victories for both fossil fuels and renewables in the last legislative session:
At the same time, however, renewables supporters – many in rural, heavily Republican areas that benefit from wind and solar development – blocked passage of what they considered the most harmful bills targeting the state’s booming wind and solar industries:
After natural disasters, Governor Abbott and other supporters of fossil fuels have so far more often seen renewables as the problem, for example, when the historic Winter Storm Uri brought catastrophic power outages to Texas in 2021. Independent academic experts concluded most problems were caused by failures of natural gas infrastructure.
Some huge climate disasters have prompted lawmakers to act, though without openly and emphatically citing those events’ climate-change connections, which were highlighted by Texas scientists including the state climatologist. These include:
The absence of more, wider-reaching, and climate-change-specific actions at the state level doesn’t mean Texas, in all its sprawling complexity, is ignoring the consequences of climate change, however. The biggest cities – all controlled by Democrats - have acted, explicitly, in various ways. In Houston, for example, city officials responded to the catastrophic flooding of Hurricane Harvey with new climate action and resilience plans.
Yet the harmful impacts of this June’s extreme heat did not come remotely close to rivaling the toll of events like Harvey, the 2011 drought and 2021’s mammoth blackouts. And Texas temperatures are moderating somewhat this week as a stalled heat dome moved eastward. “I don’t expect the [June] heat wave will change the governor or lieutenant governor’s perspectives on climate change or renewables,” said Josh Busby, a public affairs professor at the University of Texas who studies climate policy. “However, solar electricity’s effective performance in helping prevent blackouts during the heat wave may make it harder to penalize renewables as was attempted (and very nearly succeeded) in the recent legislative session.”
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist and climate policy expert at Texas A&M, expressed a similar outlook: “I don’t anticipate this year’s extreme heat to lead to any significant changes in Texas’ energy policy. It appears that many of our legislators primarily focus on policies that benefit the fossil-fuel industry rather than addressing the broader societal concerns tied to our changing climate. Despite the clear and present dangers that events like these extreme heat waves present, there seems to be a persistent disconnect in our state’s political response to the climate crisis.” Bill Dawson, Houston
The recent German-Chinese government consultations are considered a “remarkable success of German climate diplomacy,” according to the environmental organization Germanwatch. China, in a joint statement with Germany, has expressed the need for accelerated emissions reductions within this decade, which is seen as a rare commitment, as noted by the environmental organization. Jennifer Morgan, the Special Envoy for International Climate Action, was also enthusiastic, stating, “We have managed to make China say: We are ready to do more, to create more ambition, to accelerate our energy transition.”
However, the cooperation between the two countries is primarily focused on the energy transition and decarbonization of the industry. Regarding methane emissions, which China is the largest global contributor to, the two sides have only agreed to “expand cooperation in the future.” This is considered a “necessary step as China’s NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) currently only includes targets for reducing CO2 emissions,” Morgan told Table.Media. Reducing methane emissions is seen as the “fastest opportunity we have to immediately slow the rate of global warming,” according to the US environmental organization Environmental Defense Fund.
China had initially planned to present an action plan to reduce methane emissions by the end of 2022. However, the document is still delayed. The People’s Republic is the largest methane emitter and ambitious action is hindered by economic interests and dependence on coal.
However, methane causes greater short-term climate damage than CO2:
Half of China’s methane emissions come from the energy sector, primarily coal mining, accounting for 90 to 95 percent of energy sector methane emissions. Agriculture is responsible for over 30 percent of the emissions, mainly due to rice cultivation. During COP27 in November 2022, China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, announced an action plan that would include specific measures to reduce methane in the energy, agriculture and waste sectors. However, Xie already noted that China’s ability to control the gas was “weak”. The focus was on improving monitoring capabilities.
Methane has only gained significant importance in the past year in Chinese politics, according to Cory Combs, an energy and climate expert at consultancy firm Trivium China. Energy security remains much more important for Beijing. “There is no systematic approach to reduce methane emissions from coal mines,” says Combs. Additionally, the gas sector has “no specific incentives” to do so. On the contrary, the Chinese government is trying to boost domestic gas production. Measures to reduce methane emissions would hinder this goal. “I find it unlikely that Beijing will exert additional economic pressure on the gas industry while trying to increase domestic gas supply,” says Combs.
For these reasons, China is not part of the Global Methane Pledge, a global pact to reduce methane emissions. China’s energy supply relies heavily on domestic coal. Lutz Weischer from Germanwatch believes that China is reluctant to make global commitments and promises due to concerns about the direct impact on energy security. Additionally, the pledge is perceived as a Western initiative.
Due to the high costs associated with reducing methane emissions, there are also few voluntary plans from the coal industry to lower emissions. If the mining operators pass on these costs to coal-fired power plants, it could lead to energy shortages, as experienced in 2021. At that time, power plants did not replenish their coal stocks adequately due to high prices, resulting in shortages and eventually rationing of electricity for the industrial sector. The central government is determined to prevent a recurrence of such a power crisis. Combs believes that it will take a few more years for methane to become more significant in practice.
Methane emissions from agriculture are also difficult to reduce, according to Weischer’s assessment. There are fears that methane reduction will come at a higher cost, he said. Since the secure supply of food is one of the core tasks of the CCP, methane reduction is a sensitive issue.
There were already plans to reduce methane emissions in the energy sector. But in the last 15 years, the self-imposed targets for capturing methane in the coal sector could not be achieved. In some cases, mine operators would even have circumvented government regulations. Gas with a methane content of 30 percent was supposed to be captured and used. But there are indications that mine operators would have diluted the gas in order to simply continue releasing it into the atmosphere.
Since China will remain very dependent on coal for the foreseeable future, it is essential to reduce methane emissions from this sector. But this is more difficult than in the oil and gas industry:
Next week (12 July), the EU Parliament will vote on the Nature Restoration Law. For weeks, the Commission proposal has been accompanied by numerous controversies. The Christian Democrats of the EPP are in favor of rejecting the proposal altogether and maintained this position in all relevant parliamentary committees.
The EPP says it fears for two things: Europe’s food security from overly strict rules for farmers; and energy security from over-bureaucratizing the energy transition. The Greens, Social Democrats and some Liberals, on the other hand, argue that nature conservation and the restoration of damaged ecosystems are closely linked to protecting the climate.
Next Wednesday’s vote is on razor’s edge. If the majority of the parliament rejects the proposal, the law is off the table. The Commission could then submit a new proposal, but it does not intend to do so. However, the Commission itself writes that the EU climate targets can only be achieved with the help of restoration measures. This assessment is based on several factors.
To achieve the EU’s climate targets, the 27 member states are banking to a considerable extent on the sink capacity of forests, peatlands and other agricultural land. The LULUCF sectors (land use, land use change and forestry) are expected to store 310 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent annually by 2030. This is almost ten percent of the EU’s total annual emissions.
Forests bear the brunt of greenhouse gas storage. However, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA), only 15 percent of EU forests are in “good condition,” while 36 percent are actually in “poor” condition. The restoration law would require member states to improve the conditions of forests to ensure that they are able to provide the expected sink capacity in the first place. Peatlands used for agriculture are also to be restored to increase their storage capacity – 30 percent of these areas by 2030, with at least a quarter of them to be rewetted.
The IPCC recommends such action to mitigate climate change: “Restoring natural forests and drained wetlands, and more sustainable forest management, increase the resilience of carbon stocks and sinks.”
The latest IPCC reports also suggest that restoration is an integral part of the solution to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. “soil moisture conservation and irrigation are some of the most common adaptation responses and provide economic, institutional or ecological benefits and reduce vulnerability [to climate damage],” the February 2022 IPCC Working Group II report states.
“Higher genetic, species and ecosystem diversities help to reduce risk in the face of uncertain changes in climate and keep adaptation options open,” confirms the UN Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). For example, healthy coastal wetlands and coral reefs are an important factor in protecting against floods or sea-level rise, and wetlands protect against flooding on land.
The EEA writes that the state of marine and coastal ecosystems is deteriorating in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Northeast Atlantic, and especially in the Arctic seas, resulting from human intervention through overfishing, pollution, and invasive species. The EU Nature Restoration Law aims to develop restoration measures for 30 percent of endangered areas, including coastal areas.
But critics of the Restoration Law also see a massive conflict with food production here. The Ukraine war and the associated food crisis caused by inflation and high wheat prices would not allow any measures to be taken in the current situation that could further jeopardize food security, they say.
The clash of the Nature Restoration Law with the EU’s renewable expansion targets under the Repower-EU plan, which aims to make the EU independent of Russian energy imports, also plays a major role in the debate – as an argument used by opponents of the law. A key pillar of Repower-EU is reducing bureaucracy and accelerating approval procedures for the construction of additional renewable capacity.
The Restoration Law, on the other hand, envisions a case-by-case assessment of exemptions from more stringent conservation and restoration regulations. While it states that such exemptions may be made for projects of “overriding public interest outside Natura 2000 areas,” a case-by-case assessment could significantly lengthen approval processes.
The Commission proposal, therefore, jeopardizes the goals for the expansion of renewable energies, says Peter Liese, climate policy spokesman for the EPP. The Dutch government also criticizes that the ban on the deterioration of certain natural areas outlined in the legislative proposal would result in added bureaucracy for the construction of wind farms, PV and hydropower.
The energy giant Vattenfall and the German Hydropower Association also criticize the details of the Commission’s proposal, but welcome such a law in principle. The European wind industry association (Windeurope) is even a staunch supporter of the Restoration Law and sees no conflict whatsoever between the energy transition and nature conservation. On the contrary: “Restoring nature and expanding wind energy go hand in hand,” the association says.
The construction of wind farms is avoided during bird breeding or on migratory bird routes. The construction of offshore wind farms already reduces noise pollution for marine wildlife through air curtains and hydro silencers. Wind farm developers also already partner with NGOs to find ways to positively impact biodiversity, according to Windeurope.
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) now officially expects the first stronger El Niño event for the Pacific in seven years. The agency warns of “disruptive weather and climate patterns” and sharply rising global temperatures. As a result, there is a two-thirds probability that the limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius could also be exceeded temporarily for up to a year.
The natural weather pattern causes the eastern part of the South Pacific to sharply warm every two to seven years. In the process, regions such as Southeast Asia and Latin America are each affected by great heat, drought, or, on the other hand, unusual precipitation.
The WMO stated that its declaration was a “signal to governments around the world to mobilize preparations to limit the impacts on our health, our ecosystems and our economies.” Countries in Southeast Asia, in particular, are now taking precautions. Indonesia, for instance, is warning of the risk of forest fires and fears for its palm oil and coffee harvests. Even a weak El Niño inflicted economic damage of about five billion dollars on the country in 2019. Vast areas of Sumatra and Borneo have now been issued a fire warning. Residents are urged to stock up on respiratory masks as smoke from potential forest and peatland fires could drift across the region. The region is expected to experience the peak of El Niño in September.
Other countries are bracing themselves against other threats: Thailand and Malaysia fear for their rice and palm oil yields. Even small crop failures could drive up food prices, analysts warn. Vietnam expects drought, which could also reduce coffee production by 20 percent. The country also expects to generate less hydropower, which could affect factories supplying the electronics industry, such as Apple and Samsung. The Philippines already urges its population to conserve water. bpo
As a child, Antje Boetius dreamed of spending as much time as possible at sea or in a submarine, like Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo in the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Today, the deep-sea and polar researcher has been on 50 ship expeditions and heads the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. The institute appointed her as its director in November for another five years.
Recent news shows the importance of AWI’s research: New studies show the Arctic could experience ice-free summers as early as the 2030s. And surface temperatures in the Atlantic are at record levels this year. Boetius and the AWI examine the causes and effects of such events.
At the age of 21, Boetius went on her first research expedition as a student to find out how much CO2 the ocean can absorb. “Right from the first time, I knew my childhood dream was also my life’s dream,” says the 56-year-old. She earned her PhD in deep-sea microbiology and has led a research group on deep-sea ecology and technology since 2008.
Boetius researches microorganisms, single-celled organisms in the deep sea. They live in symbiosis with coral reefs or algae under the sea ice. “We only know a few percent of them,” Boetius says. Not nearly enough, because these single-celled organisms could accelerate the effects of climate change: “When it gets warmer, microorganisms tend to metabolize faster and emit more greenhouse gases.” So it could be that the consequences of global warming would still be underestimated without the single-celled organisms. Antje Boetius studies how microorganisms influence the entire ocean.
The ocean acts as a buffer for the effects of the climate crisis, storing around 93 percent of man-made heat and 25 percent of CO2, she says. The problem: Researchers observe a positive feedback effect. The warmer the Earth and the more sea ice melts, the less CO2 life can store in the Arctic.
As a scientist, Boetius also considers it her duty to pass on her knowledge “to warn society of the risks, and also the consequences, of its actions.” She shudders at the insensitivity with which many people talk about the climate crisis: “Living beings are being wiped out, people are dying or losing their homes, and a few days later, someone says there are more pressing issues.” Knowledge also means the ability to mentally deal with this threat. That is why the AWI aims to inform people as quickly as possible.
As director of the institute, Boetius herself has not been out at sea much in recent years. In August and September, she is leaving for the next major research trip to the Arctic to study sea ice – “as a reward, so to speak.” Jana Hemmersmeier
A heat wave has been gripping North America for several weeks. Bill Dawson reports from Texas, where not even the “brutal heat” is bringing about a rethink in climate policy. A look across the border to Mexico also shows little commitment to climate action. Quite the opposite: The country is expanding fossil fuels.
China also does not have a plan – at least as far as methane emissions are concerned. The world’s largest emitter of this climate killer had announced a methane strategy for late 2022, but no paper has yet been presented. The dominance of coal makes the fight against methane emissions more difficult, writes Nico Beckert. And Lukas Scheid explains what the EU’s currently much-discussed Nature Restoration Law has to do with climate action and where the biggest disputes are.
We also look to Germany: While the carbon price is now expected to rise as much as originally envisioned, the national budget may be 500 million euros short for international climate action.
Our news section also shows, among other things, how cleaner shipping fuels global warming. But we also have good news: Despite all the naysaying, the energy and transport transition in Germany are much more popular than expected – if they are planned effectively and fairly.
Despite deadly heat waves across the country, which scientists attribute primarily to global warming, the Mexican government continues to focus its energy policy mainly on oil and gas. While the development of renewables is blocked, the country continues to expand the fossil fuel industry.
Climate targets are being lowered, funds cut, the National Climate Institute will be closed, and fossil fuels will continue to be heavily subsidized. The new climate plan (NDC) will lead to higher emissions in 2030 than the plans from 2016, criticizes the think tank Climate Action Tracker. Its conclusion: “Mexico’s climate policies continue to go backwards”.
Last Friday, crude oil flowed into the newly built Dos Bocas refinery for the first time, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced. Energy Minister Rocío Nahle also announced new plans: “The country needs another refinery.” The transition to renewables is slow all over the world, but the consumption of fuel is rising now, she explained.
And yet the fourth heat wave with temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius is currently rolling across the Central American country. The prolonged drought harms agriculture, and more than a hundred people have already died. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Mexico’s average temperature has increased by 1.43 degrees since 1961. Natural water supplies are shrinking, while rising sea levels are already threatening villages on the Caribbean peninsula of Yucatán.
There is little discussion about the role of intensive domestic oil and gas exploitation in climate change. At 418 million tons (2021), Mexico ranks among the 15 countries with the highest CO2 emissions. And the government announced an ambitious-sounding NDC at COP27: By 2030, emissions are to be cut by 35 percent compared to 1990. Thirty percent are to be achieved with the country’s own resources, and five percent with the help of international cooperation.
However, because the calculation basis has been changed and there is no transparency, emissions in 2030 could be higher than in 2016, despite tighter targets, criticizes the Climate Action Tracker. A court also suspended the 2020 NDC for violating the Paris Agreement and Mexican law for not being ambitious enough. As a result, the think tank downgrades Mexico’s climate policy to “critically insufficient”.
The taste for fossil fuels has its reasons: Since the left-wing nationalist President López Obrador took office in 2018, the government’s energy policy has focused on strengthening the ailing former parastatal oil and gas company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the power utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE). Pemex in particular is popular with many Mexicans. After its nationalization in 1938, the company became a symbol of sovereignty and prosperity in the oil-rich country.
Energy policy is social policy, is what the relevant ministries are saying today. Above all, the population is to be supplied with affordable state-owned fossil energy. But the energy reform of López Obrador’s economically liberal predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto from 2013 is standing in the way. He liberalized the energy market through opening, competition and global integration.
The reform ended the state monopoly of Pemex and CFE and opened the plants to private investors. It also created conditions that allowed companies to invest freely in other private-sector plants and feed their electricity into the CFE grid. This particularly benefited renewable energy projects: solar plants, wind farms, and geothermal energy. Between 2017 and 2022, electricity generation grew by ten percent, almost exclusively through renewables, which expanded by nearly 50 percent. However, between 2021 and 2022, the share of clean electricity dropped from 27.5 to 26.1 percent, according to the political science institute IMCO.
At the same time, López Obrador invested over 17 billion US dollars in Dos Bocas and 600 million US dollars in acquiring a refinery in Texas. He acquired 13 Mexico-based power plants from the Spanish operator Iberdrola for six billion US dollars – with only one being non-fossil.
For López Obrador, the energy reform of his predecessor is a “neoliberal sell-out”. He accuses private investors of receiving preferential treatment and not acting in the public’s interest. Indigenous communities criticized wind farms in Tehehuantepec in the south of the country because, contrary to international law, the population had not been consulted about the project on their land. They also said that the promised cheap electricity had not been provided.
However, Obradore’s attempt to overturn the reform with a constitutional amendment failed in 2022 because it did not obtain the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament. Nevertheless, the government continues to pursue its concept. Authorities in charge of private-sector initiatives pay little attention to the CFE power feed-in, sustainable energy projects are blocked, and tenders are suspended. An independent fund for climate policy has been scrapped and funding has been placed under the control of the government. “This makes it hard to see how the funds are used,” criticizes Carlos Asúnsolo of the environmental organization Cemda.
As a result, the expansion of clean energy production is stagnant. “Many applications for wind farms and solar plants are stalled on various pretexts, there are very few permits,” explains sustainable development expert Victor Ramírez.
The energy ministry already admitted in June 2022 that the target of 35 percent clean electricity in 2024 would not be reached before 2031. Nevertheless, López Obrador announced at an international energy and climate forum in April 2023 that the 2024 target would be met as planned. He referred in particular to four planned wind farms in Tehuantepec and a 1.6-billion-dollar 1,000-megawatt solar park in the northern state of Sonora.
Critics see these projects as proof that the country, which has great potential for wind and solar power, is making progress. “Some private renewable energy projects have been launched in the meantime,” says sustainability expert Ramírez. This is probably mainly due to international pressure: The USA and Canada threatened Mexico with legal action on the grounds that state control of the energy market and discrimination against foreign investors violated the joint trade agreement. Wolf-Dieter Vogel, Mexico City
Despite the most recent dangerous heat wave, the US state of Texas stays the course on energy and climate policy: There is still no robust, explicit debate about manmade climate change – preventing it and preparing for it. Democrats, scientists at top Texas universities, environmentalists and others have tried for years to trigger such a public policy dialog, but Republicans have essentially refused to engage in one.
The brutal heat of recent weeks would suggest that the Texan government might reconsider its longstanding refusal to directly address the threats posed by climate change. Newspapers reported an influx of heat victims to hospital emergency rooms and inmates dying in prisons without air-conditioning.
One recent action by Governor Greg Abbott suggests that won’t happen on his watch. As dangerously high temperatures gripped the state in late June, Abbott signed into law a bill to block Texas cities from requiring 10-minute water breaks every four hours for construction workers. The state’s failure to respond to potentially deadly temperatures in prisons is also a sign that it continues business as usual.
“This year,” the Texas Tribune reported last week in a story about prison deaths, “state lawmakers chose again not to put any money directly toward installing air conditioning in the dangerously hot prisons, despite a 32.7 billion US dollar budget surplus.”
Yet there are clear warnings: Scientists at the nonprofit Climate Central organization said in June that their analysis indicated human-caused climate change made last month’s soaring temperatures in Texas and Mexico “at least five times more likely.” Other researchers had concluded that climate change also made the 2011 drought and 2017’s Hurricane Harvey more devastating in Texas.
Likewise, lawmakers’ inaction was nothing new. For years Texas lawmakers have refused to pass (and in many cases, even to consider in committee hearings) explicit climate-action bills.
Decarbonization and climate resilience are national policy in the US. Week after week, different agencies roll out billions of dollars in grants to pursue those goals. But in many states, especially Republican-controlled ones, efforts proceed to counteract US energy policy with efforts to advance fossil fuels and hamper renewables.
In the Texas Legislature, the nation’s oil and gas capital, there were victories for both fossil fuels and renewables in the last legislative session:
At the same time, however, renewables supporters – many in rural, heavily Republican areas that benefit from wind and solar development – blocked passage of what they considered the most harmful bills targeting the state’s booming wind and solar industries:
After natural disasters, Governor Abbott and other supporters of fossil fuels have so far more often seen renewables as the problem, for example, when the historic Winter Storm Uri brought catastrophic power outages to Texas in 2021. Independent academic experts concluded most problems were caused by failures of natural gas infrastructure.
Some huge climate disasters have prompted lawmakers to act, though without openly and emphatically citing those events’ climate-change connections, which were highlighted by Texas scientists including the state climatologist. These include:
The absence of more, wider-reaching, and climate-change-specific actions at the state level doesn’t mean Texas, in all its sprawling complexity, is ignoring the consequences of climate change, however. The biggest cities – all controlled by Democrats - have acted, explicitly, in various ways. In Houston, for example, city officials responded to the catastrophic flooding of Hurricane Harvey with new climate action and resilience plans.
Yet the harmful impacts of this June’s extreme heat did not come remotely close to rivaling the toll of events like Harvey, the 2011 drought and 2021’s mammoth blackouts. And Texas temperatures are moderating somewhat this week as a stalled heat dome moved eastward. “I don’t expect the [June] heat wave will change the governor or lieutenant governor’s perspectives on climate change or renewables,” said Josh Busby, a public affairs professor at the University of Texas who studies climate policy. “However, solar electricity’s effective performance in helping prevent blackouts during the heat wave may make it harder to penalize renewables as was attempted (and very nearly succeeded) in the recent legislative session.”
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist and climate policy expert at Texas A&M, expressed a similar outlook: “I don’t anticipate this year’s extreme heat to lead to any significant changes in Texas’ energy policy. It appears that many of our legislators primarily focus on policies that benefit the fossil-fuel industry rather than addressing the broader societal concerns tied to our changing climate. Despite the clear and present dangers that events like these extreme heat waves present, there seems to be a persistent disconnect in our state’s political response to the climate crisis.” Bill Dawson, Houston
The recent German-Chinese government consultations are considered a “remarkable success of German climate diplomacy,” according to the environmental organization Germanwatch. China, in a joint statement with Germany, has expressed the need for accelerated emissions reductions within this decade, which is seen as a rare commitment, as noted by the environmental organization. Jennifer Morgan, the Special Envoy for International Climate Action, was also enthusiastic, stating, “We have managed to make China say: We are ready to do more, to create more ambition, to accelerate our energy transition.”
However, the cooperation between the two countries is primarily focused on the energy transition and decarbonization of the industry. Regarding methane emissions, which China is the largest global contributor to, the two sides have only agreed to “expand cooperation in the future.” This is considered a “necessary step as China’s NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) currently only includes targets for reducing CO2 emissions,” Morgan told Table.Media. Reducing methane emissions is seen as the “fastest opportunity we have to immediately slow the rate of global warming,” according to the US environmental organization Environmental Defense Fund.
China had initially planned to present an action plan to reduce methane emissions by the end of 2022. However, the document is still delayed. The People’s Republic is the largest methane emitter and ambitious action is hindered by economic interests and dependence on coal.
However, methane causes greater short-term climate damage than CO2:
Half of China’s methane emissions come from the energy sector, primarily coal mining, accounting for 90 to 95 percent of energy sector methane emissions. Agriculture is responsible for over 30 percent of the emissions, mainly due to rice cultivation. During COP27 in November 2022, China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, announced an action plan that would include specific measures to reduce methane in the energy, agriculture and waste sectors. However, Xie already noted that China’s ability to control the gas was “weak”. The focus was on improving monitoring capabilities.
Methane has only gained significant importance in the past year in Chinese politics, according to Cory Combs, an energy and climate expert at consultancy firm Trivium China. Energy security remains much more important for Beijing. “There is no systematic approach to reduce methane emissions from coal mines,” says Combs. Additionally, the gas sector has “no specific incentives” to do so. On the contrary, the Chinese government is trying to boost domestic gas production. Measures to reduce methane emissions would hinder this goal. “I find it unlikely that Beijing will exert additional economic pressure on the gas industry while trying to increase domestic gas supply,” says Combs.
For these reasons, China is not part of the Global Methane Pledge, a global pact to reduce methane emissions. China’s energy supply relies heavily on domestic coal. Lutz Weischer from Germanwatch believes that China is reluctant to make global commitments and promises due to concerns about the direct impact on energy security. Additionally, the pledge is perceived as a Western initiative.
Due to the high costs associated with reducing methane emissions, there are also few voluntary plans from the coal industry to lower emissions. If the mining operators pass on these costs to coal-fired power plants, it could lead to energy shortages, as experienced in 2021. At that time, power plants did not replenish their coal stocks adequately due to high prices, resulting in shortages and eventually rationing of electricity for the industrial sector. The central government is determined to prevent a recurrence of such a power crisis. Combs believes that it will take a few more years for methane to become more significant in practice.
Methane emissions from agriculture are also difficult to reduce, according to Weischer’s assessment. There are fears that methane reduction will come at a higher cost, he said. Since the secure supply of food is one of the core tasks of the CCP, methane reduction is a sensitive issue.
There were already plans to reduce methane emissions in the energy sector. But in the last 15 years, the self-imposed targets for capturing methane in the coal sector could not be achieved. In some cases, mine operators would even have circumvented government regulations. Gas with a methane content of 30 percent was supposed to be captured and used. But there are indications that mine operators would have diluted the gas in order to simply continue releasing it into the atmosphere.
Since China will remain very dependent on coal for the foreseeable future, it is essential to reduce methane emissions from this sector. But this is more difficult than in the oil and gas industry:
Next week (12 July), the EU Parliament will vote on the Nature Restoration Law. For weeks, the Commission proposal has been accompanied by numerous controversies. The Christian Democrats of the EPP are in favor of rejecting the proposal altogether and maintained this position in all relevant parliamentary committees.
The EPP says it fears for two things: Europe’s food security from overly strict rules for farmers; and energy security from over-bureaucratizing the energy transition. The Greens, Social Democrats and some Liberals, on the other hand, argue that nature conservation and the restoration of damaged ecosystems are closely linked to protecting the climate.
Next Wednesday’s vote is on razor’s edge. If the majority of the parliament rejects the proposal, the law is off the table. The Commission could then submit a new proposal, but it does not intend to do so. However, the Commission itself writes that the EU climate targets can only be achieved with the help of restoration measures. This assessment is based on several factors.
To achieve the EU’s climate targets, the 27 member states are banking to a considerable extent on the sink capacity of forests, peatlands and other agricultural land. The LULUCF sectors (land use, land use change and forestry) are expected to store 310 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent annually by 2030. This is almost ten percent of the EU’s total annual emissions.
Forests bear the brunt of greenhouse gas storage. However, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA), only 15 percent of EU forests are in “good condition,” while 36 percent are actually in “poor” condition. The restoration law would require member states to improve the conditions of forests to ensure that they are able to provide the expected sink capacity in the first place. Peatlands used for agriculture are also to be restored to increase their storage capacity – 30 percent of these areas by 2030, with at least a quarter of them to be rewetted.
The IPCC recommends such action to mitigate climate change: “Restoring natural forests and drained wetlands, and more sustainable forest management, increase the resilience of carbon stocks and sinks.”
The latest IPCC reports also suggest that restoration is an integral part of the solution to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. “soil moisture conservation and irrigation are some of the most common adaptation responses and provide economic, institutional or ecological benefits and reduce vulnerability [to climate damage],” the February 2022 IPCC Working Group II report states.
“Higher genetic, species and ecosystem diversities help to reduce risk in the face of uncertain changes in climate and keep adaptation options open,” confirms the UN Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). For example, healthy coastal wetlands and coral reefs are an important factor in protecting against floods or sea-level rise, and wetlands protect against flooding on land.
The EEA writes that the state of marine and coastal ecosystems is deteriorating in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Northeast Atlantic, and especially in the Arctic seas, resulting from human intervention through overfishing, pollution, and invasive species. The EU Nature Restoration Law aims to develop restoration measures for 30 percent of endangered areas, including coastal areas.
But critics of the Restoration Law also see a massive conflict with food production here. The Ukraine war and the associated food crisis caused by inflation and high wheat prices would not allow any measures to be taken in the current situation that could further jeopardize food security, they say.
The clash of the Nature Restoration Law with the EU’s renewable expansion targets under the Repower-EU plan, which aims to make the EU independent of Russian energy imports, also plays a major role in the debate – as an argument used by opponents of the law. A key pillar of Repower-EU is reducing bureaucracy and accelerating approval procedures for the construction of additional renewable capacity.
The Restoration Law, on the other hand, envisions a case-by-case assessment of exemptions from more stringent conservation and restoration regulations. While it states that such exemptions may be made for projects of “overriding public interest outside Natura 2000 areas,” a case-by-case assessment could significantly lengthen approval processes.
The Commission proposal, therefore, jeopardizes the goals for the expansion of renewable energies, says Peter Liese, climate policy spokesman for the EPP. The Dutch government also criticizes that the ban on the deterioration of certain natural areas outlined in the legislative proposal would result in added bureaucracy for the construction of wind farms, PV and hydropower.
The energy giant Vattenfall and the German Hydropower Association also criticize the details of the Commission’s proposal, but welcome such a law in principle. The European wind industry association (Windeurope) is even a staunch supporter of the Restoration Law and sees no conflict whatsoever between the energy transition and nature conservation. On the contrary: “Restoring nature and expanding wind energy go hand in hand,” the association says.
The construction of wind farms is avoided during bird breeding or on migratory bird routes. The construction of offshore wind farms already reduces noise pollution for marine wildlife through air curtains and hydro silencers. Wind farm developers also already partner with NGOs to find ways to positively impact biodiversity, according to Windeurope.
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) now officially expects the first stronger El Niño event for the Pacific in seven years. The agency warns of “disruptive weather and climate patterns” and sharply rising global temperatures. As a result, there is a two-thirds probability that the limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius could also be exceeded temporarily for up to a year.
The natural weather pattern causes the eastern part of the South Pacific to sharply warm every two to seven years. In the process, regions such as Southeast Asia and Latin America are each affected by great heat, drought, or, on the other hand, unusual precipitation.
The WMO stated that its declaration was a “signal to governments around the world to mobilize preparations to limit the impacts on our health, our ecosystems and our economies.” Countries in Southeast Asia, in particular, are now taking precautions. Indonesia, for instance, is warning of the risk of forest fires and fears for its palm oil and coffee harvests. Even a weak El Niño inflicted economic damage of about five billion dollars on the country in 2019. Vast areas of Sumatra and Borneo have now been issued a fire warning. Residents are urged to stock up on respiratory masks as smoke from potential forest and peatland fires could drift across the region. The region is expected to experience the peak of El Niño in September.
Other countries are bracing themselves against other threats: Thailand and Malaysia fear for their rice and palm oil yields. Even small crop failures could drive up food prices, analysts warn. Vietnam expects drought, which could also reduce coffee production by 20 percent. The country also expects to generate less hydropower, which could affect factories supplying the electronics industry, such as Apple and Samsung. The Philippines already urges its population to conserve water. bpo
As a child, Antje Boetius dreamed of spending as much time as possible at sea or in a submarine, like Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo in the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Today, the deep-sea and polar researcher has been on 50 ship expeditions and heads the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. The institute appointed her as its director in November for another five years.
Recent news shows the importance of AWI’s research: New studies show the Arctic could experience ice-free summers as early as the 2030s. And surface temperatures in the Atlantic are at record levels this year. Boetius and the AWI examine the causes and effects of such events.
At the age of 21, Boetius went on her first research expedition as a student to find out how much CO2 the ocean can absorb. “Right from the first time, I knew my childhood dream was also my life’s dream,” says the 56-year-old. She earned her PhD in deep-sea microbiology and has led a research group on deep-sea ecology and technology since 2008.
Boetius researches microorganisms, single-celled organisms in the deep sea. They live in symbiosis with coral reefs or algae under the sea ice. “We only know a few percent of them,” Boetius says. Not nearly enough, because these single-celled organisms could accelerate the effects of climate change: “When it gets warmer, microorganisms tend to metabolize faster and emit more greenhouse gases.” So it could be that the consequences of global warming would still be underestimated without the single-celled organisms. Antje Boetius studies how microorganisms influence the entire ocean.
The ocean acts as a buffer for the effects of the climate crisis, storing around 93 percent of man-made heat and 25 percent of CO2, she says. The problem: Researchers observe a positive feedback effect. The warmer the Earth and the more sea ice melts, the less CO2 life can store in the Arctic.
As a scientist, Boetius also considers it her duty to pass on her knowledge “to warn society of the risks, and also the consequences, of its actions.” She shudders at the insensitivity with which many people talk about the climate crisis: “Living beings are being wiped out, people are dying or losing their homes, and a few days later, someone says there are more pressing issues.” Knowledge also means the ability to mentally deal with this threat. That is why the AWI aims to inform people as quickly as possible.
As director of the institute, Boetius herself has not been out at sea much in recent years. In August and September, she is leaving for the next major research trip to the Arctic to study sea ice – “as a reward, so to speak.” Jana Hemmersmeier
