by MARTHA PSKOWSKI
Mexico’s outgoing president put climate policy on the backburner. His mentee, incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum, talks a good game on renewables—but remains committed to oil and gas.
Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, an energy engineer and physicist by training, has published widely on the energy transition and greenhouse gas emissions as an environmental scientist. She has co-authored a U.N. climate report, and as Mexico City mayor, she installed solar power on a city market and electrified public transportation routes.
Now, the country waits to see whether her environmental pedigree will translate into action as president. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, cut funding for environmental agencies and let Mexico’s international climate commitments languish. He backed more domestic oil production and the construction of a new refinery.
Sheinbaum remained his loyal ally; López Obrador paved the way for her to ascend to Mexico’s highest office. But on energy and climate issues, while his protegé strikes a different tone, she remains committed to continued use of fossil fuels.
Sheinbaum’s campaign platform commits to the nation’s energy transition, electrifying transport and reducing Mexico’s greenhouse gas emissions. Yet she also supports a recently constructed oil refinery, natural gas pipelines and petrochemical plants. She champions domestic oil production but is largely silent on natural gas, for which Mexico is highly dependent on the United States. Sheinbaum will have to thread the needle between continuing López Obrador’s legacy—leading the party he founded—and crafting her own political identity.
“Which side of her is going to win?” said Claudia Campero, a long-time environmental activist in Mexico City who works with the organization Conexiones Climáticas. “The agenda she inherited from Andrés Manuel López Obrador? Or the agenda of the well-informed scientist who understands the climate crisis perfectly?
“It’s still up in the air.”
Sheinbaum’s Path From Scientist to Politician
Claudia Sheinbaum was born in Mexico City in 1962. Her Jewish grandparents fled Lithuania and Bulgaria. But Sheinbaum was raised in a secular household, more concerned with left-wing politics than religion.
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