Pathways to Mexico's climate change mitigation targets: A multi-model analysis

Mexico's climate policy sets ambitious national greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets—30% versus a business-as-usual baseline by 2020, 50% versus 2000 by 2050. However, these goals are at odds with recent energy and emission trends in the country. Both energy use and GHG emissions in Mexico have grown substantially over the last two decades. We investigate how Mexico might reverse current trends and reach its mitigation targets by exploring results from energy system and economic models involved in the CLIMACAP-LAMP project. To meet Mexico's emission reduction targets, all modeling groups agree that decarbonization of electricity is needed, along with changes in the transport sector, either to more efficient vehicles or a combination of more efficient vehicles and lower carbon fuels. These measures reduce GHG emissions as well as emissions of other air pollutants. The models find different energy supply pathways, with some solutions based on renewable energy and others relying on biomass or fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage. The economy-wide costs of deep mitigation could range from 2% to 4% of GDP in 2030, and from 7% to 15% of GDP in 2050. Our results suggest that Mexico has some flexibility in designing deep mitigation strategies, and that technological options could allow Mexico to achieve its emission reduction targets, albeit at a cost to the country. - Highlights: • We explore paths to deep mitigation for Mexico (50% cut in GHG emissions by 2050). • We present results from six models and compare them with Mexican climate policy. • We find a range of potential paths and costs, implying options for policy makers. • An important commonality between the paths is a decarbonized electricity supply. • Estimated mitigation costs vary but are higher than official published estimates.