Mexico

Historical data between 1990 and 2023 is taken from Mexico’s National Inventory of Greenhouse Gases and Compounds (INEGyCEI in Spanish) (SEMARNAT, 2025).

Mexico’s emissions inventory was developed using the IPCC’s 2006 inventory guidelines and its 2019 update and takes Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

2030 NDC

The 2030 NDC updated in 2022 specifies that 5% of the 35% unconditional target is to be achieved with already agreed international support for clean energies. We have thus estimated the unconditional target – to be achieved with own resources – as a 30% reduction from BAU in 2030.

Due to the lack of a detailed sectoral contribution towards the achievement of the 2030 NDC update – particularly the forestry sector, we have estimated a range of the contributions of this sector based on the emissions and sinks in the BAU baseline and the historical BAU base year (2013):

• The lower end of the range is taken directly from the 2030 NDC BAU. This is quite optimistic as it assumes no reduction of the baseline emissions sources under the baseline.
• The upper end is taken from the last inventory (INECC, 2021; Gobierno de México, 2022d). This assumption, on the other hand, implies no change in both sources and emissions from the land use, land use change, and forestry sector from the historical base year used in the BAU. Historically. The LULUCF sector in Mexico has been a stable sink of around 200MtCO₂ during the last 20 years.

Our calculations of the emissions level for the NDC targets, excluding LULUCF emissions, is:

• Unconditional target: 803-874 MtCO₂e in 2030
• Conditional target: 704-775 MtCO₂e in 2030

We did not harmonise the NDC baseline scenario with the historical emissions pathway as with previous NDC submissions, as the NDC target depended directly on the reference scenario included in the NDC (they provided absolute numbers linked to the targeted reduction).

We have recalculated the absolute emissions level of the 2020 NDC using the same assumptions on the contribution of the forestry sector

Although not specified in the submission, historically, Mexico has reported emissions using Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) from the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5).

The 2030 NDC update from 2022 also includes an adaptation component as well as a target to reduce black carbon (BC) between 51%-70% below BAU. Given that reductions in BC are generally not additional to those in CO₂ emissions, we do not quantify the additionality of the BC target (see section below on BC for more details).

2035 NDC

Mexico’s 2035 NDC target is expressed as net emissions including LULUCF, requiring an estimate of the land-use sector’s contribution in 2035 to derive a comparable target excluding LULUCF. To do this, we apply two methodological approaches to project LULUCF emissions and sinks.

First, we project LULUCF emissions using historical data from the national GHG inventory (INECC, 2025). We test two trend periods—1990 to the latest inventory year and 2014 to the latest year—and apply the trend beginning in 2014, as this reflects the period following the adoption of Mexico’s Climate Law and is considered more representative of recent land-use policy developments.

Second, we use the BAU projections for LULUCF from Mexico’s 2030 NDC and adjust them to match the 2035 NDC assumption of achieving a minimum LULUCF sink of 200 MtCO₂ in 2030. We then apply the BAU growth rate from the 2030 NDC to this 200 MtCO₂ value to estimate the LULUCF sink in 2035.

These two methods produce two separate estimates of the LULUCF contribution in 2035. We subtract each estimate from the net 2035 NDC target to derive the corresponding target excluding LULUCF. The final value is presented as a range, defined by the minimum and maximum of these two estimates.

Black Carbon and Mexico’s 2030 and 2035 NDC

Mexico’s NDCs include unconditional and conditional targets to reduce black carbon (BC) emissions, which has substantial co-benefits for human health. However, reductions in black carbon are generally not additional to reductions in CO₂ emissions, because large fractions of black-carbon emissions stem from the same emission sources as CO₂. Emissions reduction policies therefore, often reduce CO₂ and black carbon simultaneously, and this is already included in calculations of the emissions reductions in greenhouse gases required to hold warming well below 2°C globally, such as the “emissions gap” and “fair share” reductions (see next section on Fair Share).

From the climate perspective, however, there is no established scientific method to compare the climate benefits of black-carbon reductions to those of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases. In the AR5, the IPCC does not provide calculations of GWP for BC comparable to those provided for greenhouse gases, merely noting the inherent difficulties in doing so and limiting itself to just displaying estimates from the pre-AR5 literature. While Mexico’s NDC specifies a metric to compare BC with CO₂ (GWP of 900), this is based on a single literature source (pre-dating IPCC AR5), which itself notes the very large uncertainties of around 100%.

Long-term target

Mexico announced a net-zero target for 2050. To calculate emissions in 2050 excuding the LULUCF sector we have used the study developed by ICM that achieves net zero emissions in 2060 for the country(ICM, 2024). Therefore, a range has been proposed:

• Minimum: considers the residual emissions in 2060 from the study, based on the value of the sinks used (AFOLU (only sinks)).
• Maximum: two values are used to calculate the residual emissions in this case.
  • The value of the sinks used in the study (AFOLU (only sinks)) in 2050.
  • The value of emissions in 2050 that gets to net zero in 2060.

We estimate a range of possible emissions trajectories under current policies. All estimates share that emissions for the Electricity and Heat production subsector are projected using the current policies deployed under the electricity sector (Gobierno de México, 2024c). Then, based on the projections used for Energy (all subsectors except electricity and heat production), Industry, Agriculture, and Waste, two ranges are estimated:

• The upper end of the range is based on the bottom-up projections per sector, based on the baseline from the ICM report (ICM, 2022). It takes 2021 as the base year and includes existing government planning documents.
• The lower end of the range is based on the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario from the 2030 NDC updated in 2022, which assumes no additional climate policies since 2013 (Gobierno de México, 2022d).

Both scenarios have been harmonised to the latest national inventory (see Historical emissions above for further details).

The CAT uses Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) for all figures and time series.

Black Carbon

Mexico’s NDC includes a target to reduce black carbon (BC) emissions, which has substantial co-benefits for air quality and human health and can contribute to mitigating warming.

Black carbon can have both a warming and a cooling effect in the atmosphere, depending on where it is: Black carbon on snow reduces the albedo of the surface and thus leads to warming. It also leads to a higher local temperature of the snow and thus to a higher rate of snow melt. Both cooling and warming effects can emerge from interferences with other particles in the atmosphere (depending on the exact conditions). The IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report (AR6) indicates a net-positive effect on warming of black carbon over time, i.e., in sum, black carbon has contributed more to warming than cooling over the last centuries (Szopa et al., 2021). AR6 also reports an increase in the radiative forcing of black carbon over time, meaning that the warming effects are growing more strongly than the cooling effects.

The IPCC concludes that reducing emissions of black carbon (as well as other anthropogenic emissions like methane) in the short term would contribute to limiting temperature increase to 1.5°C. Along with the decarbonisation of the energy system that is required for 1.5°C, black carbon decreases in the 1.5°C compatible scenarios analysed in the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report.

The climate response of BC differs from greenhouse gases in terms of the geographical reach of its impacts, its lifetime, and its interactions with other particles and gases in the atmosphere. The IPCC therefore does not provide any estimate of the global warming potential of black carbon.