Brazil approves National Energy Transition Plan before COP31

O Brazilian government today approved the National Energy Transition Plan with actions to be implemented in the next four years, on the eve of COP31, which will take place in Antalya, Turkey.

In the plan guidelines are established to gradually reduce dependence on fossil fuels in Brazil, so that the transition is made fairly, with planning and responsibility, without disregarding environmental commitments, but also their economic, social and technological impacts, according to the Government.

During an extraordinary meeting of the National Energy Policy Council (CNPE), which approved the Plan, the Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, said that Brazil can lead worldwide the reduction of dependence on fossil fuels, even though it is an oil-producing country.

Lula stressed that Brazil is able to present concrete alternatives to the energy transition, and what the Brazilian Government will take examples of what the country has done, not just “palpites”, to the international meeting, arguing that the Brazilian experience can serve as a reference for other countries.

The Brazilian President recalled that during the COP30 held in Belém, the proposal to create the document Map of the Way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels faced resistance, especially among oil producing countries.

“It was almost a forbidden word,” he said, adding that the fact that Brazil also produced oil gave the country “moral authority” to lead the discussion.

“ We will arrive at COP31, in Turkey, with an organized proposal for the world to take seriously the possibility of us decreasing faster than we thought the dependence on fossil fuel in the world,” he said.

Lula stressed that Brazil presents not only theoretical proposals, but alternatives built from the experience of a country that discovered the pre-salt and also identified new possibilities for oil exploration in the Equatorial Margin.

“ Even so, we continue to be the country that will lead the debate on the decrease, until we can come one day to dream no longer need fossil fuel ", he said.

The head of state said he intends to present at the conference the results of the reduction of Brazilian emissions, which, he indicated, decreased 560 million tons between 2022 and 2024, in addition to advances in the fight against deforestation.

Lula also highlighted the reduction of fires in all Brazilian biomes during the current mandate and said that the country will arrive at COP31 with the lowest level of deforestation in its history.

In the area of environmental funding, Lula mentioned the advances in the implementation of the Tropical Forest Fund for Forever (TFFF), which already amounts to $7.8 million, and said he wants to convince other countries to contribute to the initiative.

“It’s not giving, it’s investing. And part of the profit will be passed on to environmental preservation ", said, defending that forest conservation can represent an economic opportunity for investors.

Lula also pointed out that the Amazon Fund received 7.8 billion reais (about 1.27 billion euros in the current exchange rate) in investments between 2023 and 2025, after a period of paralysis.

The President also argued that environmental preservation may be more profitable than the destruction of the forest for opening pastures, adding that there are financing mechanisms capable of making conservation an economically attractive activity.