Clean Energies, from a Means to an End

Regarding the debacle generated by the regulatory changes of the Energy Regulatory Commission related to the measurement of energies in the national electric system, I believe it is important to remember that increasing clean energies in the energy matrix of our country is not an end in itself and the correct indicator is not the percentage of clean energies that the matrix has.

Clean energies are a means for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, for the decarbonization of the energy matrix and of the emissions intensity of the national electric system. The famous percentage of 35% is an indicator that was calculated with the purpose of determining how much clean energy proportional to the total was necessary to reduce a given volume of emissions.

“Clean energies are a means for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”

But let us go to the beginning. After the signing, ratification and entry into force of the Paris Agreement, the countries took on as a task to establish the nationally determined contributions. Within this framework, Mexico established a series of commitments for the 2020-2030 period within which the following stands out: “By 2024, 35% clean energy will be generated and by 2030, 43%, including renewable energy, cogeneration with natural gas and thermoelectric plants with CO2 capture.”

At that time, with data from 2013, Mexico’s greenhouse gas emissions for electric generation were 127 million tons of CO2 equivalent, so it was determined that by having clean energy generation of 35% by 2024, then the emissions that were linearly calculated could reach 177 million tons and decrease to around 130 million tons of CO2 equivalent.

The regulatory changes published by the Energy Regulatory Commission at the end of the month of May, which modified the methodologies for the measurement of clean energies to consider as clean energy that electricity produced by the gas steam of combined cycle plants that use natural gas, as long as it does not use additional fuel, derived in the update of the National Electric System Development Program (PRODESEN) 2023-2037.

In that sense, and according to said document, generation in 2022 presented a total of 31.2% clean energies, an amount that was obtained based on the methodological modifications of Agreement No. A/018/2023 of the CRE, published in the DOF on May 26, 2023. That is, because of the change in calculation from 2021 to 2022, the newly catalogued non-renewable clean energy increased by 7,502.1 GWh.

This recategorization, however, does a poor favor to the reduction of international commitments, since according to SEMARNAT data, from 2021 to 2022 the emissions factor of the National Electric System went from 0.423 tons per MWh to 0.435 tons per MWh. That is, more clean energy by reclassification with more emissions in the system.

If we consider the same information from PRODESEN 2023-2037, we can multiply the total generation of the system by the emissions intensity to obtain the absolute, that is, in 2021 when 328,598 GWh were generated, 138,997 kilo-tons of CO2 equivalent (ktCO2eq) would have been produced and in 2022 with 340,713 GWh, 148,210 ktCO2eq were emitted into the atmosphere. There is the paradox, since our emissions increased by almost 10,000 tons, at the same time that the participation rate of clean energy generation increased.

The moral of this story is that it is of no use to us to see the participation of clean energies as an end, since in themselves they should be a means for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. That is, even if tomorrow all gas were declared clean and 80% of the country’s energy, by decree, were clean, the reality would be that, ultimately, there are no emissions decreases, therefore, the country’s progress in fulfilling its climate objectives would continue to be highly insufficient.

This article was originally published by Energía a Debate.
Date: June 12, 2023
Link: https://energiaadebate.com/energias-limpias-de-un-medio-a-un-fin/ [Online]

The Green Party and the Electric Reform

The position of the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) regarding the electric reform proposed by the federal government should go down in history as a serious risk to the environment of Mexicans and as a flagrant violation of the principles of green parties worldwide.

Green parties exist in a large part of the world and are born as an alternative movement to traditional parties of the left or right, liberal or conservative, because instead of proposing a broad agenda based on a series of values, they concentrate on an ideal or specific value and seek to influence the political system transversally, in this case and primarily, the environment.

For the most part they are the result of the revolution on sustainability that developed in the 1970s-1980s and if we start from the classic quote by Max Weber: “Politics is the aspiration to participate in power or influence the distribution of power,” initially these political organizations, more than the aspiration to participate in power, had as their purpose to influence the distribution of power in order to position sustainability on the agenda.

The first green parties appeared in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in the 1970s and began to spread throughout the rest of Europe between the 1980s and 1990s with the growing relevance of sustainability, the environment and climate change of the new world order after the Cold War. In Mexico, as part of that same wave, in 1993 the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico was founded.

In 2001, around 800 delegates from green parties from 72 countries in the world met in Australia to sign the Global Greens Charter based on six guiding principles: ecological wisdom, social justice, participatory democracy, nonviolence, sustainability and respect for diversity.

The Global Greens Charter was revised in 2017 and in it they recognize the climate crisis as one of the great challenges of world society and establish their commitment to limit the increase in global temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees, for which emissions should have gone down by 2020.

The agenda of the greens considers, then, working to support the transition to a zero-emissions global economy, promoting a moratorium on fossil fuels, stopping deforestation, promoting taxes on non-renewable sources and using the funds to finance the adoption of renewable energies and energy efficiency programs.

After reviewing the history and principles of the Greens worldwide, it is impossible to justify the arguments and actions of the PVEM in the proposal for constitutional reform in electric matters promoted by the federal government, since, despite the fact that it is established in the constitutional text, it does not contribute to the energy transition.

“…the green supports an initiative that bets that with the change of dispatch, CFE plants that use diesel, fuel oil and mineral coal will be used first.”

Instead of that, the green supports an initiative that bets that with the change of dispatch, CFE plants that use diesel, fuel oil and mineral coal will be used first. In contradiction, hydroelectric plants will not be able to increase their capacity in great proportion and will depend largely on the amount of water stored during the rainy seasons.

The PVEM allied itself with a project that does not establish taxes on fossil sources and, on the contrary, eliminates the only financial instrument that existed to promote the installation of renewable energies, the Clean Energy Certificates (CEL). In addition, instead of limiting dirty generation, it will promote it.

For this reason, and if Mexicans had a reliable long-term memory, the position of the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico regarding the electric reform proposed by the federal government should go down in history as a violation of the international principles of green parties, against the historic struggle of these organizations worldwide and against our environment. Unless green is only because of the color of the bills.

This article was originally published by Energía a Debate.
Date: Aplirl 12, 2022
Link: https://energiaadebate.com/el-partido-verde-y-la-reforma-electrica/ [Online]

Energy and Globalization

The energy transition planned and developed through international agreements is framed within the project of world order after the Cold War. This project, however, requires economic stability and global peace to foster international cooperation from an approach of mutual gains. Current events not only question the validity of the world order based on globalization, but also change the traditional paradigm of the energy transition that was gestated in this world order.

Let us go back in time three decades and return to the 1990s. In general, it could be said that this decade was marked by international optimism and economic stability, not to say an economic boom. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War brought to an end the bipolar global order that governed the international community since the 1950s, which generated confidence to establish a new world order based on international free trade.

The appearance of regional blocs based on this new idea was a reflection of the possibility of a global world. The North American Free Trade Agreement created the largest commercial region in the world, while the Maastricht Treaty laid the foundations to advance in the integration of the European Union. The need to advance in the development of the less favored countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America was also recognized, leaving aside colonial aspirations of the countries but generating mechanisms for free trade.

“It was recognized, then, a threat to international security different from the traditional threats of the postwar period.”

With the threats of mutual global destruction due to a nuclear conflict behind, the international community began to concentrate on other social demands such as climate change. In the 1990s, the Earth Summit, the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol were pillars to guide the first global efforts of decarbonization. It was recognized, then, a threat to international security different from the traditional threats of the postwar period.

Facing the Russia and Ukraine conflict, the possibility of continuing under this model of multilateral cooperation in the future is questioned and it reveals the difficulty of maintaining cohesion to achieve common objectives, particularly in the energy and international decarbonization issue. It would seem that with this the stage of international optimism closes to return to that of multipolar political realism where each region defines its priorities based on its particular interests.

This article was originally published by Energía a Debate.
Date: Aplirl 5, 2022
Link: https://energiaadebate.com/la-energia-y-la-globalizacion/ [Online]