Sen. Larry Scott
District 42
In 2019, our newly elected Governor issued an executive order mandating the greenhouse gas emissions be reduced every few years to culminate in a 100% reduction by the year 2050. The private sector has been making plans and trying to adjust to this mandate for the last seven years and those efforts are now coming home to “roost.”
It is an absolute fact the emissions associated with the generation of reliable, affordable, and available electricity correlate directly with economic well being and prosperity. Basically, wealth generation translates into higher standards of living with associated increases in energy consumption. The United States, for example, emits 17.6 tons of CO2 per capita making our country one of the highest on the planet. We are also, arguably, one of the richest countries on the planet. By contrast the people living in the lowest emitters in sub-Saharan Africa exist on incomes that average less than $40 per month. It only takes a bit of common sense to see that our current public policy would take New Mexico not in the direction of increasing prosperity, but rather in the direction of Africa. This is NUTS.
The petroleum and utility industries in our State have been trying to adapt to the mandates but, as the target reductions become more severe, they become harder and harder to achieve without sacrificing either availability, reliability, or affordability. Just one of the consequences here is now a three year wait for new industrial service requests for electricity in southeast New Mexico. We simply do not have the power.
A work around that was passed in our last legislative session, completely under the progressives emissions control radar, was a bill that allowed micro-grids to utilize fossil fuels (natural gas) to generate electricity as long as these did not connect into the larger utility system. A large data center project is now underway in the Las Cruces area that is projected to require some 2,000 megawatts of generating capacity, all of which will come from natural gas fired engines. One can appreciate the irony. On one hand our ETA (Energy Transition Act) required the closure of the San Juan coal fired power plant resulting in the loss of over 1,000 mostly tribal jobs in the four corners area. On the other hand, we are building a facility that will generate almost four times the emissions of the closed power plant. The difference is that the public cannot now participate in any of the electricity generated. It can’t be connected to the grid. Another consequence of the misguided path we are traveling is that emissions are actually going to be larger than they otherwise would have been had we just allowed high efficiency utility scale combined cycle natural gas fired generation.
SB4, the ‘Clean Horizons’ act was introduced in the 2025 legislative session to codify in statute the Governor’s executive order thereby making it much harder to change the course of this policy. While it made it through only one Senate committee last session, we expect to see it resurrected again in the 2026 session. It is not possible to over emphasize the folly of taking New Mexico down the path that leads to ‘third world’ status. Our Governor bragged recently during a town hall at NMJC that our resources were being exported to provide power “around the world.” Our State has been blessed with abundant natural resources right here in our back yard. It is unconscionable that we cannot utilize these to create economic opportunity, jobs, and prosperity for our own citizens.
Larry Scott of Hobbs is the state senator, representing District 42 in Eddy, Lea and Chaves counties.
