Lisa Viscidi, director of the Energy Program, gave a presentation to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Mexican energy policy under AMLO and its implications for US-Mexico energy trade.
The fires in the Amazon expose the very heart of the greatest collective action problem that humanity has faced, and it foreshadows harder battles to come. The actions of each individual country have consequences for the global climate, yet perpetrators are loath to make sacrifices when others, especially those with equal or greater responsibility, are not doing the same. The fact that threats of economic punishment seem to have shifted Brazil’s behavior suggests that a similar approach could be taken to address climate change on a larger scale. But it will not be easy, especially where the biggest emitters are concerned.
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As wildfires rage in the Brazilian portion of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro finds himself under increased international scrutiny. Program Director Lisa Viscidi comments for BBC World News on Bolsonaro’s policies toward the Amazon.
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Brazil has vast oil reserves, but can the Bolsonaro government get the energy to market? Lisa Viscidi tells Richard Miles of CSIS that reforms are already in place that will enable oil production “to take off.” The real obstacles are the financial stability of Petrobras, the shaky state oil conglomerate, and the monopoly that the state has on most aspects of energy production, delivery, and even retail sales.
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La directora del Programa de Energía Lisa Viscidi habló con NTN24 sobre por qué a Rusia le interesa formar parte de la OPEP (Organización de Países Exportadores de Petróleo) a pesar de los problemas que esto supone para el país.
Countries in the Amazon Basin are falling behind on their targets to cut deforestation. Environmental enforcement combined with economic incentives could provide a way forward, write Lisa Viscidi and Enrique Ortiz in this op-ed.
Revitalizing Brazil’s energy sector will be key to Jair Bolsonaro’s success as president – but so far, he’s had mixed results when it comes to getting reforms through Congress. Unless Bolsonaro learns to work with legislators and ease turbulence within his government, Brazil’s missing energy reforms will continue to threaten its economy, and its politics.
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Lisa Viscidi, director of the Energy, Climate Change & Extractive Industries Program, appeared on CGTN to discuss the reasons for the unprecedented blackout that affected all of Argentina and Uruguay and parts of Paraguay on June 16, how it affects Argentine President Mauricio Macri’s re-election campaign, and whether it could happen again.
Just as Pemex bonds suffered a downgrading to junk status by Fitch, Lisa Viscidi, director of the Energy Program, sat down with Nathaniel Parish Flannery of Forbes to discuss the state of Mexico’s energy sector, including oil and gas, regulators, and renewables, seven months into the AMLO administration.
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Deforestation rates in the Amazon River Basin have risen to near-record levels in recent years, threatening biodiversity and indigenous lands as well as global climate change efforts and weather patterns in the Amazon region and beyond. The lack of governance across Amazonian nations is a primary factor behind countries’ failure to stem forest loss, said experts at an event launching a new Inter-American Dialogue report on May 29.
The largest tropical rainforest on the planet, the Amazon plays a critical role as a storehouse of carbon and mediator of the global water cycle and holds a greater share of the world’s known biodiversity than any other ecosystem. However, unchecked development is placing the Amazon under threat, pushing deforestation rates to near-record levels throughout the region.
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The development of energy resources is an integral component of many of Latin America’s economies, from established producers like Colombia and Brazil to newcomers to the global energy market like freshly oil-rich Guyana. However, policymakers and energy companies throughout the region must devise solutions to a variety of fiscal, political, social, and environmental hurdles to ensure successful and sustainable projects, explained speakers at an Inter-American Dialogue event on May 10.
A lack of transmission-line maintenance may have been the immediate trigger for the power outage that left much of Venezuela in darkness on March 7, but it is a symptom of almost two decades of government mismanagement that has debilitated Venezuela’s power sector, draining its reserves of both human and financial capital and nudging it towards collapse.
Regulators and private companies will continue to play important roles in the development of Mexico’s energy resources despite President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s focus on strengthening state-owned companies and enhancing “energy sovereignty” by reducing dependence on energy imports from the United States. This was the key message from speakers at “La nueva política energética de México,” an Inter-American Dialogue event in Mexico City.
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In a wide-ranging panel about current events in energy, Lisa Viscidi commented on the shift in the US energy trade balance and its effects on foreign policy, Chinese financing for foreign energy projects, the importance of upgrading transmission lines for expanding renewable power generation, and how the Green New Deal attempts to reframe the discussion on climate change in the US.
