Current Policy Projections
Overview
Taking the impacts of COVID-19 into account, our most recent assessment finds that GHG emissions in 2020 excluding LULUCF will drop from 2019 levels by about 4%. According to an analysis by SEEG and the Observatório do Clima (SEEG, 2020), emissions in the energy and industry sectors are expected to fall in 2020 as a direct result of the pandemic, which caused a reduction in fossil fuel combustion for transport and electricity generation and a downturn in industrial production.
The reduction in emissions from power generation, transport, fuel production and industrial processes is the dominant effect, leading to an overall decline in emissions in 2020. Meanwhile, emissions from agriculture are set to maintain an upward trend due to a reduction in the number of slaughtered animals. after a decade of decline, emissions from deforestation are on an upward trend, driven by a continued roll-back of forest protection policies that is enabling ever higher deforestation rates (INPE-EM, 2020; SEEG, 2020). Including these in the total might lead to an overall increase in 2020 (SEEG, 2020).
By 2030, we expect that Brazil’s currently implemented policies will take total emissions (excluding LULUCF) to 1,001 – 1,010 MtCO2e in 2025 and 1,029 – 1,039 MtCO2e by 2030 (respectively, 18 – 19% and 22 – 23% above 2005 levels and 78 - 79% and 83 - 85% above 1990 levels). Under this scenario, emissions in the energy and industry sectors gradually increase after the post-COVID-19 economic recesession, reaching 2018 levels by 2030, and emissions in the agriculture and LULUCF sectors are expected to continue to increase until 2030 at least.
Brazil’s NDC includes an economy-wide target of 1.3 GtCO2e by 2025 and 1.2 GtCO2e by 2030. However, with rising deforestation rates and LULUCF emissions, Brazil is on track to miss both its 2020 deforestation target and its economy-wide NDC targets by a large margin. These findings have been confirmed by independent assessments (Angelo & Rittl, 2019; Observatório do Clima, 2020b).
Bolsonaro’s administration is at odds with the urgent need for climate action in Brazil. Current energy infrastructure planning, which foresees a very important role for fossil fuels in the decades to come, and the developments in the LULUCF sector reflect a worsening of national climate policy implementation and ambition.
President Bolsonaro and his team of Ministers have publicly expressed their opposition to many of Brazil’s existing climate policies and have passed legislation that weakens the institutional and legal framework to fight deforestation and other environmental offenses, as well as reforms that substantially weaken the participation of civil society, including pro-environment groups, in policy making and oversight of policy implementation (Associated Press, 2019; Observatório do Clima, 2019d, 2019e; The New York Times, 2019).
The main policy instruments included in our current policy projections pathway are the energy efficiency national plans and the incentives for the uptake of renewables in the energy sector, including capacity auctions in the power sector and the ethanol and biodiesel mandates in the transport sector (IEA, 2019). In addition to the policies included in the World Energy Outlook current policy scenario, we estimate the impact of The Resolution Nr 5 of June 2018, which includes the annual national emissions intensity targets of the national biofuels policy RenovaBio (Conselho nacional de política energética, 2018).
Brazil will need to implement additional policies to meet its economy wide NDC targets, but is well on track to meet its energy sector NDC targets according to the Ten Year Plan (Ministério de Minas e Energia – MME, 2019), as shown in the table below.
Brazil has enacted other sectoral plans to reduce emissions in other sectors of the economy, including the Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change for a Low-Carbon Emission Agriculture (ABC Plan), the Steel Industry Plan, the Low Carbon Emission Economy in the Manufacturing Industry Plan, The Sectoral Transport and Urban Mobility Plan and the Low-Carbon Emission Mining Plan. Most of those policies and instruments, however, are still not part of national development planning and are therefore not included in our current policy projections emissions pathway.
To contribute to a global peak in emissions followed by a steep decrease in the coming decades, as required under the Paris Agreement, Brazil will need to reverse its current trend of weakening climate policy by sustaining and strengthening policy implementation in the forestry sector, reversing present steps to expand fossil fuel energy sources, and accelerating mitigation action in other sectors.
Energy supply
Agriculture
Land Use and Land Use Change
Transport
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