Second Mexican ETS Academy

The Mexican Emissions Trading System Pilot (ETS Pilot) started operating on 1 January 2020. It covers direct CO₂ emissions from the energy and industry sectors. The latter includes, among others, the automotive, cement, lime, chemical, food and beverages, glass, iron and steel, metallurgical, mining, and petrochemicals subsectors, as well as the pulp and paper subsector. Participation is limited to entities with annual emissions of at least 100,000 tons of CO₂, amounting to around 300 entities. In this configuration, the pilot covers approximately 40 percent of Mexico's national emissions.

In this context, the Mexican Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, SEMARNAT, convened the second ETS Academy in a virtual setting. Its aim was to provide Mexican decision makers and key stakeholders with a robust understanding of key concepts and the requirements for effective implementation of this instrument in the Mexican context, especially during the ETS pilot phase that started in January 2020. Key decision makers from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and industry stakeholders of Mexico participated. The project also targeted other relevant national ministries and agencies, state level administrations and policy makers, business associations and industry representatives, where appropriate.

The adelphi-led Secretariat of the International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP), together with the World Bank’s Partnership for Market Readiness (PMR) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), led the implementation of this virtual training, which conveyed an in-depth understanding of emissions trading as an instrument for mitigating greenhouse gases with a special focus on the operation of the Mexican pilot, and served to build capacity on the technical design and implementation of carbon markets and emissions trading systems.