President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is moving full speed ahead with plans to roll back the 2013 energy reform of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). In a sign of the importance López Obrador attaches to Mexico’s energy sovereignty, on 1 February he chose this subject matter for his first priority bill to congress since he took office in December 2018. This gives legislators just 30 days to debate a bill that would further restrict the role of private renewable energy companies and reassert the monopoly of the state electricity firm Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE). The bill puts his government on a collision course with the new US administration led by President Joe Biden, and could set off an avalanche of legal action.
The bill President López Obrador sent to congress for urgent consideration would establish a pecking order for the supply of energy to the national grid, elevating that provided by the CFE from fossils fuels and hydroelectricity above that provided by private wind and solar plants, and combined-cycle power plants.
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