Mexico and greenhouse gas emissions

Historical and Political Context

Mexico has experienced political strife throughout its history, including major wars and executions of leaders. The Spaniards invaded the region in 1519, conquering the Aztec and Mayan native cultures. Mexico attempted to declare independence from Spain in 1810, resulting in war and the execution of a number of leaders from Mexico. This war of independence lasted until 1821, when Spain finally granted Mexico its autonomy. The Mexico of 1821 included most of present-day Central America and the southwestern United States.

There was constant strife in Mexico until 1867, especially between a group supporting the centralized federal government required by the 1824 constitution and a group that supported a more localized government. During this time, the constitution was suspended, which resulted in civil war. The Republic of Texas, among others, declared independence from Mexico and was able to defeat the Mexican forces. Later, Mexico lost a war with the United States for control of Texas.

In 1867, Benito Juárez restored the republic of Mexico as a democracy, and he began to modernize the country. His acts reduced the power of the Catholic Church over Mexican politics, required equal rights for all people, and brought the army under civilian control. Porfirio Díaz was the ruler of Mexico from 1876 to 1911. He helped invest in the arts and sciences, and he improved Mexico’s economy, reducing economic inequality and political repression. Diaz resigned in 1911 after an election fraud was found, and this event caused another Mexican revolution.

The government entered a chaotic period. A number of elected leaders were overthrown and assassinated. Finally, in 1929, Plutarco Calles founded the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which became the dominant party in Mexican politics until the end of the twentieth century. Mexico became more stable under the party. The economy grew significantly from 1940 to 1980. The government took over mineral rights, including nationalizing the petroleum industry into the organization called PEMEX. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, however, gradually became oppressive and authoritarian. For example, the government in 1968 killed many protestors.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party began to lose its control over Mexican politics in the 1970s, as some non-Institutional Revolutionary Party politicians were elected. In 1989, the first non-Institutional Revolutionary Party governor of a state was elected. It was suspected, however, that the Institutional Revolutionary Party changed the election results in the 1988 presidential elections so that its candidate, Carlos Salinas, won. This infuriated many people. Salinas signed the North American Free Trade Agreement and helped control inflation. By 1994, however, the economy in Mexico collapsed. The United States helped spur the Mexican economy, so that it had rebounded by 1999. In 2000, Vincente Fox became the first non-Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate to be elected president.

Impact of Mexican Policies on Climate Change

Mexico has a free-market economy with the eleventh highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world as of 2018. Mexico has improved railroads, the distribution of natural gas, airports, and the generation of electricity. It has also become one of the largest producers of cars and trucks in North America. The economy of Mexico tends to be linked to that of the United States, as economic downturns and upturns in the United States have been reflected in Mexico. The country has a large middle class, although there are still significant income disparities among the Mexican people. Many persons live in poverty, especially in rural areas.

Mexico has made a definite commitment to energy conservation to reduce pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere and to promote energy efficiency. The nation has several major metropolitans areas with populations over one million. The Mexico City metropolitan area is the largest, with over twenty-one million inhabitants as of 2018.

The use of refining fuels such as gasoline and diesel, the two most used liquid fuels, grew steadily in Mexico. For instance, the use of refining fuels in Mexico grew from 141,000 kiloliters per day in 1988 to 206,000 kiloliters per day in 2000. Lead was eliminated from gasoline, and sulfur in gasoline and diesel fuels was drastically decreased in the 1990s. Fuel oil (4 percent sulfur) and national diesel (2 percent sulfur) were replaced by gas oil (2 percent sulfur), industrial fuel (1 percent sulfur), and Pemex Diesel Industrial (0.05 percent sulfur).

These improvements in fuel helped greatly to reduce air pollution, especially from lead and sulfur, in the Mexico City metropolitan area. The metropolitan area lies in a valley, with mountains surrounding much of the region. Pollution settles in this valley for much of the year because of an atmospheric inversion layer that forms over the valley trapping them. This results in a multitude of health effects on the city’s inhabitants. The adoption of catalytic converters has also improved air quality. Mexico City’s carbon monoxide emissions decreased by 454,000 metric tons per year from 1989 to 1994, reducing the amount of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere by 67 percent. In addition, ozone concentrations decreased by 36 percent from 1991 to 2003.

The use of fossil fuels for energy generation will likely continue to play a role in Mexico. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2014, while the share of oil, though still dominant, in the country's primary energy mix had been reduced to 51 percent, the share of natural gas had continued to increase, making up 32 percent that year. Meanwhile, renewable energy only represented 8.5 percent of the total primary energy mix. In 2013, the Mexican government had instituted a sweeping, historical reform policy that essentially deregulated the energy sector for the first time by doing away with the state monopoly on the production of oil and gas.

Mexico as a GHG Emitter

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions were estimated to be 385 million metric tons in 2000 and 438 million metric tons in 2007. During this period, Mexico produced about 1.6 percent of the world’s CO₂ emissions. The largest CO₂ emissions were from burning of fuels from industry and in the home (about 32 percent) and from transportation (about 15 percent). In 2013, according to a report from Mexico's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change, the country's total GHG emissions were estimated to be 665.3 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent. Mexico’s CO₂ emissions will likely continue to stay high as the country remains largely dependent on fossil fuels and its population grows, unless a more effective means to reduce emissions can be found.

Mexico signed the Kyoto Protocol in 2000. The goal of the protocol was to stabilize GHG emissions (especially those of CO₂, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulfur hexafluoride) to prevent climate change. The industrialized countries agreed to reduce their GHG emissions by 5.2 percent compared to those of 1990. The Kyoto Protocol was put into effect in February 2005. The treaty divided countries into Annex I (industrialized) countries and non-Annex I (developing) countries. Under the treaty, an Annex I country can invest in projects to help reduce GHG emissions in a non-Annex I country. The Annex I country will earn credit for reducing the other country’s GHG emissions that it can use to offset its own emissions in excess of its treaty obligations. For instance, Japan could invest in developing solar energy in Mexico to be used for electrical generation. Japan would then be given credits that it could either use to gain permission to emit more GHGs or sell to a third party.

The major commitment of Mexico as a non-Annex I country is to examine its GHG emissions with time to help limit their emissions. One approach to limiting its GHG emissions could be to add a tax on fossil fuels to increase the costs of the fuels and to reduce the Mexican government’s subsidies on fossil fuels. The higher cost of the fossil fuels would reduce the use of the fuels and reduce GHG emissions. For example, it was predicted that if a tax of $10 per ton (in US dollars) had been levied on Mexican fossil fuels starting in 1987, this tax would have resulted in a reduction of about 943 kilograms per person in CO₂ emissions. It would also have increased the Mexican government’s revenues by $772 million, or about 3.2 percent. The petroleum, mining, chemical, and construction industries of Mexico would likely stand to lose the most from such a tax. Also, a tax on fossil fuels would encourage the development of more energy-efficient motors in vehicles and the use of more energy-efficient fuels.

Bioenergy sources, such as wood fuels, grain ethanol and other farming fuels, and cattle residues, have been suggested to replace some fossil fuels and reduce GHG emissions. For instance, if Mexico used biofuels (especially ethanol, biodiesel, and electricity generated from biological materials) to replace 16 percent of fossil fuels, then CO₂ emissions could be reduced by 79 million metric tons of CO₂ by 2030.

In 2015, Mexico took another step toward efforts to reduce GHG emissions by passing the Energy Transition Law, which is meant to serve as a guide for clean energy practices, including regulations and goals pertaining to the sustainable use of energy, in the electricity sector. Additionally, that same year, Mexico committed to a nationally determined contribution in advance of signing and ratifying the Paris Agreement in 2016 of reducing its GHG and black carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2030. The share of natural gas, particularly in electricity generation, which was believed to continue increasing by that point, was also seen by many as a move in the right direction as an at least cleaner alternative than oil.

Summary and Foresight

The economy of Mexico in the latter half of the twentieth century went from an agrarian economy to a more industrialized economy, increasing national consumption of fossil fuels and production of hard goods such as cars and trucks. Correspondingly, GHG emissions spiraled upward as well. The Mexican government has become more stable in the early twenty-first century than it was for much of its past, as political and police corruption have decreased. Nevertheless, there still appears to be a number of corrupt government officials, including police officers, who are ready to take bribes.

Traffic in illegal drugs has been a steadily increasing problem in Mexico. The so-called drug lords have been killing the police, army officials, one another, and many innocent civilians. Some civilians appear to have been held for ransom to obtain more money for the drug lords and some persons appear to have been killed to provoke fear in the general population. Also, some local areas in Mexico have been taken over by those involved with drugs. There may be an imminent danger that much of Mexico could be destabilized if these actions continue, and an unstable society will be much less equipped to institute climate policy initiatives to respond to global warming. Thus, Mexico must curtail these problems to be able to progress as a stable, democratic society. The efforts of Mexico to reduce the GHG emissions could be derailed if money is channeled elsewhere to stop the activity in drugs.

Key Facts

• Population: 124,574,795 (July 2017 estimate)
• Area: 1,964,375 square kilometers
• Gross domestic product (GDP): $2.458 trillion (purchasing power parity, 2017 estimate)
• Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e): 665.3 in 2013
• Kyoto Protocol status: Ratified 2000
• Paris agreement status: Ratified 2016

Bibliography

Boyd, Roy, and Maria E. Ibarraran. “Costs of Compliance with the Kyoto Protocol: A Developing Country Prospective.” Energy Economics, vol. 24, 2002, pp. 21–39. Describes a potential method for Mexico to limit GHG emissions by imposing an energy tax on the burning of fossil fuels.

First Biennial Update Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: Executive Summary. Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change, 2015, unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Executive%20Summary‗1.pdf. Accessed 15 Oct. 2018.

Islas, Jorge, et al. “A Prospective Study of Bioenergy Use in Mexico.” Energy, vol. 32, 2007, pp. 2306–20. Describes the use of wood, farming fuels (such as alcohol produced to run cars), and municipal waste as alternative fuels to reduce CO₂ emissions. Numerous tables and figures.

McKinley, Galen, et al. “Quantification of Local and Global Benefits from Air Pollution Control in Mexico City.” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 39, 2005, pp. 1954–61. Summarizes information about air pollution in Mexico City and potential means for improving air quality. Includes seven data tables.

"Mexico." The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 9 Oct. 2018, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html. Accessed 15 Oct. 2018.

Mexico Air Quality Management Team. “Improving Air Quality in Metropolitan Mexico City: An Economic Evaluation.” World Bank Latin America and the Caribbean Region, 2002. Evaluates air pollution in Mexico City and argues that reducing air pollution by certain amounts could affect the health of the residents. Tables and graphs.

Mexico Energy Outlook. International Energy Agency, 2016, www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/MexicoEnergyOutlook.pdf. Accessed 15 Oct. 2018.

Nova, M., J. Gasca, and U. Gonzalez. “The Energy Demand and the Impact by Fossil Fuels Use in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area from 1988 to 2000.” Energy, vol. 31, 2006, pp. 3381–90. Compares contemporary and predicted future use of fossil fuels in Mexico generally to that of the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. Discusses the city’s influence on the air quality in Mexico. Numerous tables and figures.