Fernanda Ballesteros leads the Natural Resource Governance Institute’s work in Mexico and is part of the organization’s energy transition coordination group.
Last week, Claudia Sheinbaum started her six-year term as Mexico’s president. Among great expectations for change, many are puzzling over how she might honour her background as a climate scientist while also upholding the legacy of her predecessor and ally Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
His administration doubled down on fossil fuel production and unconditionally picked up the tab for Pemex – Mexico’s national oil company – despite its debts exceeding $100 billion dollars, about 6% of Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product.
In her inauguration speech to Congress on Tuesday, Sheinbaum said: “National consumption will continue to be the fundamental objective of Pemex’s oil production, limited to production of 1.8 million barrels per day. We will promote energy efficiency and the transition to renewable energy sources to meet the growth in energy demand.” Can she and Mexico have their cake and eat it too?
Sheinbaum has pledged to make Mexico a global leader in the fight against climate change and a champion of the energy transition. But her green ambitions are possibly at odds with some of her election promises.
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One of them was making Mexico self-sufficient in gasoline, which would require major investments in Pemex’s refining capacity. To date, this has not been a fruitful pursuit: Pemex’s Deer Park and Olmeca refineries represent over 90% of Pemex infrastructure spending from 2019 to 2024, and it is uncertain when Olmeca will begin to operate at full capacity.
Considering that Pemex is the world’s most indebted national oil company and that its financial woes are well known among investors and the Mexican public, Sheinbaum and her officials must explain as soon as possible their plans and demonstrate that they are viable. Justified scepticism abounds.
In her favour, Sheinbaum has appointed an energy team including experts with a strong track-record of public service and good knowledge of the sector, such as the new energy minister and the CEOs of Pemex and the electricity commission. Here are three steps she and her team should take now to ensure that Mexico improves its fiscal health and embarks on a meaningful energy transition.
1.Reassess Pemex’s future production and business plans
According to our analysis, Pemex ranks 11th among the 58 national oil companiesin terms of financial risk from oil and gas assets that will lose value as the world transitions away from fossil fuels.
We found that approximately $10 billion in Pemex’s production assets would not break even under the IEA’s Announced Pledges Scenario. Pemex must recognise this risk, come up with a solid plan to mitigate it, and publish it widely.
Production has been dropping progressively since 2010 while also becoming more and more costly. Pemex has not been meeting its emission reduction targets and this is costing the company dearly in terms of access to finance and investor confidence.
Diversifying Pemex’s business can be a solution. But how and where to diversify must be technically and financially viable. For example, if Pemex eyes petrochemicals as an option, it must consider that only 12% of current hydrocarbons demand goes to this sector and many companies are already pursuing it.
2.Reduce Pemex’s operational greenhouse gas emissions
Despite a decline in overall production, emissions continue to rise significantly: 58% from 2012 to 2016 and 51% from 2018 to 2022. These spikes correlate with sharp rises in direct methane emissions, which tripled from 2012 to 2016 and nearly doubled from 2018 to 2022. These spikes correlate with sharp rises in direct methane emissions, which tripled from 2012 to 2016 and nearly doubled from 2018 to 2022.
Recent analysis from the Natural Resources Governance Institute (NRGI) suggests that accountability and governance are critical to achieve methane reductions. But the agencies that regulate Pemex have not had enough power to rein in the company. The new Government must empower the energy regulators to stand up to Pemex, have sufficient autonomy, capacity and budget to enforce the rules.
3. Develop and publish a full-scale energy transition plan
While her non-specific aspirations for a greener future seemed to resonate with voters, now that she is in office Sheinbaum must take a much more tactical and detailed position.
To achieve her climate and energy objectives, Sheinbaum will have to devise a credible and actionable strategy that phases out fossil fuels in Mexico, in a way that responds to the climate agenda and prioritizes the public purse.
Her plan must have Pemex at its core and address the company’s dire financial situation. She must also assign clear roles and responsibilities for Pemex and for the electricity commission, so their actions advance the energy transition based on a coordinated, integrated vision.
Civil society organizations have been working on proposals to achieve a just energy transition that addresses national challenges. Through the México Resiliente coalition, of which NRGI is part, more than 30 organizations have developed the National Plan for Decarbonization and Climate Resilience 2024-2030, with specific recommendations for the new government. We hope Sheinbaum will take these on board and release Mexico from its dependency on its sputtering state oil company and fossil fuels.
Pemex extracts 95% of the oil and gas in the country and 64% of Mexico’s emissions are tied to the energy sector. The bottom line for Sheinbaum’s climate ambitions is what happens at Pemex.
The post Mexico’s new president must reform national oil company Pemex appeared first on Climate Home News.
Mexico’s new president must reform national oil company Pemex
Climate Change
Large flotilla brings Pacific voices and message to leaders at Pre-COP meeting: Keep 1.5C Alive
NADI, FIJI Wednesday 7 October 2026 — Around 80 people including Pacific and Torres Strait community members, Elders and youth activists travelled as part of a colourful flotilla past the Pre-COP venues with a message for leaders: ‘Keep 1.5°C Alive’.
High res footage and images available here
The large flotilla included traditional Fijian voyaging vessel the Uto Ni Yalo, six 6-person outrigger canoes, and Greenpeace campaigning vessel the Oceania which sailed from Sydney to the Pre-COP in Nadi. On board were Elders, climate-vulnerable communities members from across the Pacific and Torres Strait, youth activists and poets, and campaigners and climate experts from across the region.
Messaging on canoes and banners said ‘Hold the Line at 1.5°C’ and ‘Keep 1.5°C Alive’ — a reminder to leaders that the climate limit established under the Paris Agreement is a non-negotiable survival line.
Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “People from across the Pacific and Australia have come together today to make sure the voices of our communities are heard by leaders meeting here in Nadi for the Pre-COP climate talks. The Taku Pakasoa Declaration adopted here at Pre-COP means ‘Strength in Unity’, and that’s how we’re coming together today.
“Our message is clear: Hold the Line on 1.5°C and centre those most impacted by the climate crisis in your decision-making. Our children’s futures must not be stolen away so that polluting nations can continue down the fossil-fuel path.
“Limiting global heating to 1.5°C is a non-negotiable survival line for Pacific communities and for humanity. Every cyclone, every storm now blows with the deadly force of accumulated emissions and gives a warning of what is to come as we face a dangerous summer of climate-fuelled extreme weather. Do not ignore our voices.”
On board, Aigagalefili Fepulea’i-Tapua’i, Pacific youth climate advocate and poet from Aotearoa Climate Action Network, said: “To hold the line on 1.5C for our Pacific family, New Zealand, as the only country where the connection between environmental protection and indigenous rights is legally validated by our constitutional document, must protect the rights of Māori.”
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Media contact: Kate O’Callaghan in Nadi on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal)
Large flotilla brings Pacific voices and message to leaders at Pre-COP meeting: Keep 1.5C Alive
Climate Change
A ‘victory’ for communities as High Court rules climate impacts from coal and gas must be considered even where fossil fuels are exported
SYDNEY, Wednesday 7 October 2026 — In response to the landmark High Court ruling that climate impacts of fossil fuel projects must be considered by NSW planning authorities, the following lines can be attributed to Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific
“The High Court decision today is a victory for communities that bear the brunt of the storms, bushfires and extreme weather fuelled by Australian fossil fuel corporations.
“Coal and gas companies have claimed they are not responsible for their pollution because it happens overseas, but today Australia’s highest court sided with common sense and scientific evidence to find that every new coal and gas approval in this country could put us at risk, no matter where it is sold or burnt.
“As leaders meet at the Pre-COP talks in Fiji this week, Pacific communities are reaffirming the importance of the 1.5C temperature limit as a survival line for humanity, and is a scientific, moral and legal obligation as affirmed by the landmark Pacific-led ICJ Advisory Opinion. The highest court in the world, and now in Australia, have been clear: it is legally imperative that all of the pollution from fossil fuel projects be considered before approving a new project.
“Now is the moment for the Australian Government, as COP31 President of Negotiations, to find the courage, leadership and grit our country is known for to chart a new course away from fossil fuels. This begins with showing leadership at home by ending new coal and gas approvals.”
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After witnessing the effects of sea-level rise in the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders on Tuesday used the pre-COP31 summit in Fiji to voice their frustration at the difficulties they have experienced in tapping the global climate finance system.
A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and climate funds took a trip to Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll on Tuesday morning, travelling by road over land just 10-20 metres wide to visit a project that is building barriers to keep the sea from the land.
They then flew to Fiji for the pre-COP summit, where several Pacific leaders said they had been let down by the insufficient quantity, bad terms and slow speed of international finance to help them adapt to a warming climate that is bringing higher oceans, drought and more powerful storms to their shores.
“Right now, our islands are like a canoe that has been rammed by a massive foreign ship. Our canoe is taking on water, we are sinking, and what is the world’s response?” asked Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr.
“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole,” he continued, “but the bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it. And while we wait, the water continues to fill.”
Pacific leaders and Australia called again on governments to invest in the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which has been designed by the Pacific Islands Forum and is seeking $500 million in investments by COP31 in November.
It has around $180 million so far, but did not receive additional pledges during the UN General Assembly in New York. The PRF aims to invest to generate annual returns which it can give to projects like water tanks for drought-hit communities.
Witnessing sea level rise
The annual pre-COP gathering is usually a low-profile technical meeting of climate negotiators. But this year, Australia – which is the president of negotiations at COP31 – partnered with the Pacific to introduce a “leaders segment” in an attempt to shine a spotlight on climate issues affecting the region.
Fourteen government leaders – from Australia, Timor-Leste, Mauritius and the Pacific – made the trip. They were joined by the European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.
On their return to Fiji, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale told the pre-COP leaders roundtable that the sea level rise they had witnessed was personal for him.
“Tuvalu was not just a site visit for me. I saw the story of my own saltwater people,” he said, adding that he, his daughter and his grandfather had lost their houses to sea level rise and that three-quarters of his electorate live on land that will be underwater in the next 30 years.
From the other side of the world, Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Michael Joseph said Tuvalu’s problems felt similar to those of his own Caribbean islands. “I saw vulnerable communities… just metres from the sea and people determined to remain on their land, preserve their culture and way of life,” he said.
A group of Fijian schoolchildren told the leaders it was not just sea level rise the Pacific struggles with but also heatwaves, droughts and storms, which worry their families and prevent them from learning.
Climate finance red-tape
Several Pacific leaders criticised the world’s leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown expressed disappointment that only two non-Pacific leaders had come to the pre-COP, a fact Australian media widely picked up on to label the event a flop and question its A$20 million (US$14m) price tag.
“We’ve heard a lot of numbers these last two days,” Brown said. “Let me share one of my own. More than 50 invitations extended to world leaders… to see for themselves what high emissions are doing to our nations and our ocean – an ocean that covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.”
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He called for more climate finance for the Pacific, asking “if the world is prepared to assess our suitability for climate finance, why is it not equally prepared to scrutinise whether those responsible for delivering it are meeting their obligations?”
Like Palau’s president Whipps, Naoero’s President David Adeang criticised the red tape that is hindering access to climate finance as well as a lack of money, complaining especially about “complicated procedures, heavy reporting, delays in approval and disbursement”.
Adeang added that “the way we assess vulnerability matters”, adding that it should be measured by more than income. Naoero, for example, is classified by the World Bank as high-income, restricting which climate finance it is eligible for.
Action plan to improve access
On Thursday, the Australian government will present a statement and action plan on improving access to climate finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, which it is asking other countries and organisations to endorse.
The statement addresses some of these Pacific complaints as well as acknowledging that progress has already been made on simplifying access by multilateral development banks and climate funds.
In Fiji, Asian Development Bank head Masato Kanda said his institution is “tailoring our finance and operations to island realities” because “your children and their children should be able to grow old in the countries their ancestors have called home for millennia”.
The executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Mafalda Duarte, said that the GCF-backed coastal adaptation project leaders visited in Tuvalu shows that “climate finance works” although – as the project took eight years to implement – “it takes time, and therefore we have no time to waste”.
Australia calls for optimism
While Pacific leaders expressed concern that the world is set to blast past its agreed 1.5C warming limit, endangering their nations, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for “optimism”. “If people think there is no hope, then they will not strive to get the change that we need,” he said.
He said that when he attended his first COP in 2005, Australia’s renewable energy target was 2%. Its target is now 82% renewable electricity by 2030.
While Albanese promoted Australia’s success at electrifying homes and businesses and rolling out renewables, he has been criticised by climate campaigners for extending the production of fossil fuels, including coal – largely for export.
France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut defended the European Union’s climate action at the pre-COP meeting. She said the continent was heating up and reducing emissions faster and providing more climate finance than anywhere else in the world.
“It is time for all major emitters to step up and do their fair share” on climate finance, she said. Most developing countries with large emissions have fiercely resisted joining the club of climate finance donors, arguing they have played a disproportionately small historic role in causing climate change.
Barbut, as well as Palau’s president Whipps, called for the next flagship scientific assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be finished by COP33 in 2028, in time to inform the next global stocktake of national climate action.
This timeline has been opposed by countries like India, Saudi Arabia and China, who argue it would put an unfair burden on developing countries. Barbut said countries should “support the work of the IPCC rather than sabotage its calendar”.
Barbut said that governments should agree at COP31 to aim to raise the share of “clean electricity” in final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The Turkish and Australian governments have pushed for this goal although without specifying that the electricity should be “clean”. Barbut added that COP31 should also agree to cut emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
The post Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu
Large flotilla brings Pacific voices and message to leaders at Pre-COP meeting: Keep 1.5C Alive
A ‘victory’ for communities as High Court rules climate impacts from coal and gas must be considered even where fossil fuels are exported
