Mexico’s new president promises to resume fight against climate change

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} In her first days as Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum made a point of distancing herself from the fossil fuel reliance promoted by her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and vowed to resume an energy transition that he halted. The president said in the coming days she will unveil an “ambitious energy transition program” aimed at “the reduction of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.” Yet Sheinbaum has also promised to strengthen the nation's Federal Electricity Commission, which owns older plants that mainly burn fossil fuels, and state-owned oil company Pemex. “The terms ‘sustainability’ or ‘renewable energy’ really never appeared,” in López Obrador’s policies, said Rosanety Barrios, who worked for more than a decade at the Mexican Energy Regulatory Commission. The energy policy promoted by López Obrador led Climate Action Tracker, an organization which evaluates the actions countries take to comply with the Paris Agreement, to downgrade Mexico’s rating to “critically insufficient.” In her speech to Congress, the president also announced what would be the country’s first ever limit on oil production – 1.8 million barrels per day.