Brazil

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Critically Insufficient4°C+ World

NDCs with this rating fall well outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would exceed 4°C.

Highly insufficient< 4°C World

NDCs with this rating fall outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach between 3°C and 4°C.

Insufficient< 3°C World

NDCs with this rating are in the least stringent part of a country’s “fair share” range and not consistent with holding warming below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C.

2°C Compatible< 2°C World

NDCs with this rating are consistent with the 2009 Copenhagen 2°C goal and therefore fall within a country’s “fair share” range, but are not fully consistent with the Paris Agreement long term temperature goal. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming could be held below, but not well below, 2°C and still be too high to be consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5°C limit.

1.5°C Paris Agreement Compatible< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDCs in the most stringent part of its “fair share” range: it is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Role model<< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDC is more ambitious than what is considered a “fair” contribution: it is more than consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Global warming potentials

For this assessment we present emissions data in GWPs from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Brazil’s inventory data is presented in its official communications in GWPs from the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

Historical emissions

Historical data until 2015 is based on the latest inventory data submitted to the UNFCCC in the third biennial report (Ministry of Science Technology and Innovations and Communications, 2019). For historical data between 2015 and 2017 we use the most recent estimates of emissions from Observatório do Clima (Observatório do Clima, 2019a)and harmonise to the emissions levels from the Third Biennial Report.

The only important difference between the two sources comes from the LULUCF sector, and is explained by the fact that Observatório do Clima is based on an old GHG inventory methodology that is not consistent with the one used for the third biennial report due to lack of public data: "The methodological basis of the estimates of SEEG is the Brazilian Inventory of Anthropogenic Emissions and Removals of Greenhouse Gases, published by Ministry of Science and Technology (MCTI). For the Agricultural, Energy, Industrial Processes and Waste sectors SEEG used 3rd Inventory methodology, which underwent public consultation in 2014/2015 and is awaiting publication. As for Land Use Change was followed by the second Inventory methodology since without the publication of land cover transition maps It’s not possible to migrate to the new methodology" (Idem).

NDC

In the absence of a clear split between LULUCF and non-LULUCF emissions, the CAT estimates the NDC for Brazil on emissions excl. LULUCF as follows: We calculate the 37% and 43% reduction below 2005 levels suggested in the NDC (including LULUCF) and subtract from these levels the most recently projected LULUCF values (Ministério da Ciência Tecnologia Inovações e Comunicações Brasil, 2017) from these levels, after a harmonisation with historical data, in order to estimate the emissions reduction target excluding LULUCF. Given that the target emissions levels provided in the NDC use Global Warming Potentials (GWP) consistent with the IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5) we convert those target levels to GWP AR4 by applying the reduction rates to historical 2005 emissions levels in GWP from AR4.

2020 Pledge

BAU emissions were taken from the levels provided in the Decree No. 7390, of 2010 (Presidência da República, 2010), as basis for calculating the % reduction including LULUCF. The pledge excluding LULUCF was calculated by applying the target to total emissions and subtracting LULUCF levels in 2020 consistent with the achievement of the targets in the deforestation sector, which were calculated making use of the information provided in the Decree No. 7390 for the LULUCF sector.

In addition, for illustrative purposes, we calculate the indicative 2020 non-LULUCF emissions target that would be required if LULUCF emissions were to follow alternative projections for LULUCF produced by national experts (Rochedo et al., 2018) instead of the official government projections.

Current policy projections

The current trend projections are based on the World Energy Outlook 2018 Current Policy scenario projections for CO₂ only (IEA, 2018). In addition, we estimate the impact of the new annual national emissions intensity targets of the RenovaBio policy. For this we estimate the underlying emissions intensity in the WEO projections and apply the percentage reduction included in the Resolution Nr 5 of June 2018. Given that targets are only defined until 2028 and imply an increasing yearly reduction, we assume for 2029 and 2030 the same yearly improvement rate defined by the law between the 2019-2028. We then deduct the avoided emissions resulting from the improved emissions intensity from the WEO projections.

For other CO₂ emissions we assume the average growth rate of the last ten years will be maintained until 2030. For non-CO₂ emissions we base our estimates on the US EPA projections until 2030 (US EPA, 2012). To ensure consistency we harmonise the results of our current policy projection to the last available historical data point. For the LULUCF pathway the quantification is based on the latest national projections (Ministério da Ciência Tecnologia Inovações e Comunicações Brasil, 2017).