Mexico yet to cross clean energy threshold

From an article by Emilio Godoy on Tierramérica:

MEXICO CITY, Jun 8 (Tierramérica).- Despite its great potential for energy from the sun, wind and water, Mexico has not taken advantage of the Clean Development Mechanism laid out in the Kyoto Protocol climate change agreement.

Mexico, responsible for 1.5 percent of the world's climate changing emissions, was chosen by the United Nations as the host for the main celebrations of World Environment Day, June 5.

The most recent available official data on greenhouse gas emissions, from 2002, indicate that this country released 643 million tons of carbon dioxide per year: 61 percent from the generation and consumption of energy, 22 percent from industry and 14 percent from deforestation.

Electricity, which is produced primarily in plants run on fossil fuels, contributes some 114 million tons of carbon emissions annually in Mexico.

Based on that tally, Mexico could make better use of CDM projects to develop wind, solar and geothermal sources, energy efficiency and fossil fuel substitution, which would allow the country to cut its emissions by some 130 million tons, according to the Mexican Carbon Fund (FOMECAR).

Mexico registered 115 CDM projects, but just 10 percent are being executed. By May, 5.7 million carbon emissions reduction certificates had been issued.

The objective of CDM is that the industrialized nations will invest in projects to reduce emissions in developing countries as a way to offset emissions in their own countries.

In this way, the countries of the North obtain credits in their favor, as if they had reduced their greenhouse emissions.

But "the CDM is in a transition phase, it's been exhausted. In Mexico's case, the number of projects and quantity of credits issued have been somewhat disappointing," Gabriel Quadri, former director of the government's National Ecology Institute and director of the company Ecosecurities, told Tierramérica.