The men on the midnight shift smoked cigarettes and cracked jokes in the
glow of their helmet lights as they prepared to go underground. They were
loading safety equipment and coils of pipe on to wheelbarrows, in
readiness for a second shift due to start working later that week.

�We�re reactivating the industry,� said Arturo Rivera Wong, who had just
taken on 40 more workers at the mine he owns in the scrublands of the
border state of Coahuila.

�Four furnaces at the big thermoelectric plant are going to be
reactivated,� he explained. �This is going to kickstart coal sales.�

As the climate crisis worsens and clean energy prices plunge, governments
around the world have been weaning their economies of coal and other
fossil fuels.

Mexico is moving in the opposite direction.

President Andr�s Manuel L�pez Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, has
unveiled plans to buy nearly 2m tons of thermal coal from small producers
like Rivera. He also plans to reactivate a pair of coal-fired plants on
the Texas border, which were being wound down as natural gas and
renewables took a more prominent role in Mexico�s energy mix.

Not only is L�pez Obradorbetting big on fossil fuels, he is also
curtailing clean energy.

The populist president has promoted a vision of energy sovereignty, in
which state-run bodies � the oil company Pemex and the Federal Electricity
Commission (CFE) � pump petroleum and generate electricity. Private
players, which have heavily invested in clean energy, are relegated to a
secondary role in L�pez Obrador�s vision � while emissions and climate
commitments are an afterthought.

�Instead of thinking of a transition from coal and fossil fuels, he�s
thinking of using more coal and petroleum,� said Adri�n Fern�ndez
Bremauntz, director of Iniciativa Clim�tica de M�xico, an environmental
organisation.

�No other G20 country has such abnormal or retrograde energy policies as
this government,� he added. �It�s not going to advance us toward our
climate goals.�

Amlo�s policies stand in stark contrast to those of the Biden
administration, which has declared that the climate crisis poses an
�existential threat� and unveiled a flurry of policies to decouple the US
economy from fossil fuels.

The CFE�s current investment plan forgoes clean energy projects entirely.
And a bill for overhauling the electricity industry that was recently sent
to Congress would force the CFE to purchase power from its own facilities,
including coal plants, before renewables.

L�pez Obrador has said his government will refurbish the CFE�s
hydroelectric installations, which would allow Mexico to meet its climate
commitments of generating 35% of its electricity via renewables.

But to make its case for prioritising fossil fuels and re-establishing a
state-run electricity industry, the Mexican government has repeatedly cast
doubt on the dependability of renewables � arguing that solar and wind
energy are unreliable and claiming they had been given preference over CFE
hydroelectric projects.

And despite increasingly powerful hurricanes, droughts and other extreme
weather which have afflicted the region, it has stayed silent on the
climate crisis.

After a December blackout plunged 10.3 million customers into darkness,
the CFE partly blamed the afternoon outage on record levels of renewable
energy overloading the power grid.

In the past, Mexico has been a climate leader. It was the first developing
country to deliver its climate action plan ahead of the Paris agreement,
but such ambitions are now treated with crushing lack of interest by the
government.

�The Paris agreement has zero relevance to anything they�re talking about
in the electric sector right now,� said Jeremy Martin, vice-president for
energy and sustainability at the Institute of the Americas.

L�pez Obrador outlook on fossil fuels and state-run companies stems from
his upbringing in the oil-rich state of Tabasco at a time when Pemex was
seen as the vehicle for national development. Private companies and
foreigners had been excluded from the energy sector since a 1938
expropriation.

But an opening of the industry in 2013 encouraged a spate of new
investment � much of it in renewables. Mexico also introduced clean energy
auctions, which �set record prices for how low developers were bidding to
put renewables into the mix�, Martin said.

Those auctions stopped after L�pez Obrador took power in December 2018.
Anaid Velasco, research director at the Mexican Center for Environmental
Law, described the new government�s policy as: �I�ll put obstacles in the
path of the private sector, which invested most in renewables and I�ll put
most of my efforts � and at least 80% of the budget � into fossil fuels.�

Even as the coronavirus pandemic heaps misery on Mexico, L�pez Obrador has
continued to pour funding into Pemex and hasn�t slowed construction on a
massive $8bn oil refinery.

�We�re going to rescue Pemex and the CFE,� Amlo says often, appealing to
nationalism and impugning his predecessors for opening up the energy
sector to private and foreign investors.

George Baker, a veteran Pemex analyst, compared Amlo�s rhetoric on energy
to Donald Trump�s fixation with restoring the US coal industry. �It�s a
kind of feelgood statement on the level of �Make America great again�,� he
said.

L�pez Obrador has also showed a marked enthusiasm for coal, which produces
roughly 9.5% of Mexico�s electricity. In October, he travelled to the
coalmining regions of Coahuila, to announce the reactivation of the CFE�s
coal-fired plants. He called clean energy a �sophism� to prioritize
private over public enterprise.

The president�s commitment to coal was welcome relief for miners like
Rivera, whose family has worked in the mines for three generations.

Mining almost ground to a halt in 2019 when the CFE stopped purchasing
amid plans to transition to cleaner energy source. About 10,000 miners
lost their jobs.

To stay afloat, Rivera shut down the mine, and sold 20 cows and the house
he had inherited from his mother. Some of his employees were forced to
scrounge for nuts to feed their families.

His company now extracts 700 tons of coal a week from his mine which
burrows under the parched terrain of cactus and mesquite.

The region is pocked with mines of all sizes, ranging from artisanal
pocitos, or �little holes�, to large-scale operations and open pits. �You
dig 30 meters and you strike coal,� said Javier G�mez Acu�a, director of
Prodemi, a state-government agency to promote mining. �It�s everywhere.�

Conditions are often hazardous: 19 February marks the 15th anniversary of
the Pasta de Conchos disaster which killed 65 miners.

As the coal-fired plant reopens more furnaces, Rivera expects to ramp up
production to 1,900 tons a week.

�What does the president want? To reactivate the economy because 50% of
this region depends on mining,� Rivera said.

Rivera didn�t deny the climate crisis and said drought had gripped the
region for three years. �We definitely believe in climate change and
alternate forms of producing energy have to be pursued. But we need to
advance bit by bit,� he said.

Workers preparing to reopen the coalmines seemed more worried about work
than the climate.

�They say they�re no longer going to buy coal because of these solar lamps
and stuff like that,� said Luis Alberto Garc�a. �But I hope we can always
sell coal because we make more money from it.�

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/mexico-coal-fossil-fuels-
climate-crisis-amlo