The US, Canada and Mexico are to promise today to generate half their overall electricity from clean energy by 2025, the White House said.
“We believe it is an aggressive goal, but that it is achievable continent-wide,” Brian Deese, a senior adviser to US President Barack Obama, said on Monday.
He spoke during a telephone conference call with reporters two days ahead of a summit between the three nations’ leaders in Canada.
Photo: Reuters
Last year, clean energy — wind, solar and hydropower, plus nuclear power — accounted for 37 percent of the three nations’ electricity, he added.
In the US, the region’s largest electricity producer by far, clean energy generates about a third of total output, putting it behind Canada, but ahead of Mexico.
The rise in the coming years will be “principally driven by renewables and energy efficiency,” Deese said.
In Canada, hydropower generates about 59 percent of electricity and nuclear power another 16 percent.
Mexico is also to join an existing commitment by the US and Canada to reduce production of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by between 40 and 45 percent of the 2012 levels by 2025.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his guests Obama and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto are to meet in Ottawa for the North American Leaders Summit today under a climate of economic uncertainty following Britain’s vote to leave the EU on Thursday last week.
Linked by the North American Free Trade Agreement since 1994, the three nations usually hold an annual summit dubbed the “Three Amigos.”
Chaired for the first time by Trudeau — the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party — following his election victory in November last year, the summit is also to be Obama’s last before he steps down in January next year.
The two met in March during Trudeau’s visit to Washington, which marked a distinct warming in relations following a decade of rule by Trudeau’s conservative predecessor former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, who showed little interest in the fight against climate change.
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