It is natural, I believe, transparency makes governments uncomfortable, not for nothing, it is a constant struggle with citizens, media outlets and social organizations around the world. Here in Mexico, even, the government carries out an open crusade to define the true truth and establish nuances to everything that the media outlets publish, as if the media outlet were more important than the object that is communicated. Form is substance, then, the old political school would say.
The energy sector, of course, is not the exception and the problem of transparency is great, as if transparency harmed the consumer or the citizenry. I leave you some examples. In these days in which LP Gas has become a trend in Mexico because of price controls and Gas Bienestar, accessing the open data of prices to generate a comparison is a titanic task.
The Energy Regulatory Commission publishes daily the current prices of LP gas through distribution plant reported by the permit holders. For this, it establishes a form that asks for the Federal Entity, Municipality and Locality to be selected from the list, as well as to check a box that says “I am not a robot.”
If the media outlets or civil organizations wanted to report the average prices of the whole country in real time, they would have to select more than 2000 municipalities and other thousands of localities. As if it were a moral duty of the CRE to present partial data in areas of protecting the market.
The pattern repeats itself from agency to agency. In CENACE there is no information related to the amount of renewable energy that is limited, as does happen in California, nor can we know the amount of electric energy by technology by state, municipality and hour of generation. They will say that for protection of the market, as if the competent authority, COFECE, could not attend to this issue.
CFEnergía does not publish the prices and quantities of natural gas that it buys, alluding to the fact that they are unregulated activities. But they have a very important effect on the plants that deliver energy to CFE Basic Supply, which is indeed a regulated activity and whose effects we already saw in February with the freezes in Texas.
In any instance, energy obscurantism is present, from Environmental Impact Manifestations that have public versions mutilating the most important elements to protect the business, to the social impact manifestations whose publicity shines by its absence.
The national energy sector urgently needs a movement that consolidates an idea of open energy where the benefits for citizens and consumers are greater than those of the State, its agents or the business itself. Where transparency is not a painful and costly exercise for citizens and media outlets, but rather a practive exercise of periodic obligations that facilitate consultation and the maximum publicity of information. It is urgent, then, to escape energy obscurantism.
This article was originally published by Energía a Debate.
Date: September 10, 2021
Link: https://energiaadebate.com/escapar-del-oscurantismo-energetico/ [Online]