The world’s most biodiverse nation, Brazil, has belatedly published its UN plan for halting and reversing nature decline by the end of this decade.
Brazil is home to 10-15% of all known species on Earth, 64% of the Amazon rainforest and it supplies 10% of global food demand, according to official estimates.
It was among around 85% of nations to miss the 2024 deadline for submitting a new UN nature plan, known as a national biodiversity strategy and action plan (NBSAP), according to a joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian.
On 29 December 2025, Brazil finally published its new NBSAP, following a lengthy consultation process involving hundreds of scientists, Indigenous peoples and civil society members.
The NBSAP details how the country will meet the goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the landmark deal often described as the “Paris Agreement” for nature, agreed in 2022.
Below, Carbon Brief walks through six key takeaways from Brazil’s belated NBSAP:
- The government plans to ‘conserve’ 80% of the Brazilian Amazon by 2030
- It plans to ‘eliminate’ deforestation in Brazilian ecosystems by 2030
- Brazil has ‘aligned’ its actions on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss
- The country seeks to ‘substantially increase’ nature finance from a range of sources
- Brazil’s plans for agriculture include ‘sustainable intensification’
- Brazil conducted a largest-of-its-kind consultation process before releasing its NBSAP
The government plans to ‘conserve’ 80% of the Brazilian Amazon by 2030
The third target of the GBF sets out the aim that “by 2030 at least 30% of terrestrial, inland water and of coastal and marine areas…are effectively conserved and managed”. This is often referred to as “30 by 30”.
Previous analysis by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that more than half of countries’ pledges were not aligned with this aim. (Importantly, all of the GBF’s targets are global ones and do not prescribe the amount of land that each country must protect.)
Brazil’s NBSAP sets a substantially higher goal – it seeks to conserve 80% of the Amazon rainforest within its borders, as well as 30% of the country’s other ecosystems.
Since Brazil is one of the largest countries in the world, in addition to being the most biodiverse, this higher target represents a significant step towards achieving the global target.
For the purposes of its protected areas target, Brazil considers not just nationally designated protected areas, but also the lands of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola territories and other local communities.
As the NBSAP notes, Brazil has already taken several steps towards achieving the “30 by 30” target.
In 2018, the country created or expanded four marine protected areas in its territorial waters, increasing its protected area coverage from around 1.5% to greater than 25%.
According to Brazil’s sixth national report, submitted to the CBD in 2020, 18% of the country’s “continental area” – that is, its land and inland waters – was part of a protected area. More than 28% of the Amazon received such a designation.
A further 12% of the country is demarcated as Indigenous lands, which “provide important protection to a large territorial extension of the country, particularly in the Amazon biome”, the report says.
The action plan that accompanies the new NBSAP sets out 15 actions in support of achieving target three, including recognising and titling Indigenous lands, establishing ecological corridors and biosphere reserves and implementing national strategies for mangrove, coral reef and wetlands protection.
It plans to ‘eliminate’ deforestation in Brazilian ecosystems by 2030
As well as committing to the GBF targets of protecting and restoring ecosystems, Brazil’s NBSAP also sets a separate target to “eliminate” deforestation in Brazilian biomes by 2030.
Target 1B of Brazil’s NBSAP says that the country aims to “achieve zero deforestation and conversion of native vegetation by 2030”.
The country hopes to achieve this “through the elimination of illegal deforestation and conversion, compensation for the legal suppression of native vegetation, prevention and control of wildfires, combating desertification and attaining land degradation neutrality”.
This goes above and beyond what is set out in the GBF, which does not mention “deforestation” at all.
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reelected as leader in 2022 on a promise to achieve “zero deforestation”, following a rise in Amazon destruction under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Data from Global Forest Watch (GFW), an independent satellite research platform, found that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by a “dramatic” 36% in 2023 under Lula.
However, Brazil remains the world’s largest deforester. Separate GFW data shows that the country accounted for 42% of all primary forest loss in 2024 – with two-thirds of this driven by wildfires fuelled by a record drought.
Brazil has ‘aligned’ its actions on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss
Brazil’s NBSAP comes shortly after it hosted the COP30 climate summit in the Amazon city of Belém in November.
One of the presidency’s priorities at the talks was to bring about greater coordination between global efforts to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.
At the Rio Earth summit in 1992, the world decided to address Earth’s most pressing environmental problems under three separate conventions: one on climate change, one on biodiversity and the final one on land desertification.
But, for the past few years, a growing number of scientists, politicians and diplomats have questioned whether tackling these issues separately is the right approach.
And, at the most recent biodiversity and land desertification COPs, countries agreed to new texts calling for closer cooperation between the three Rio conventions.
At COP30, the Brazilian presidency attempted to negotiate a new text to enhance “synergies” between the conventions. However, several nations, including Saudi Arabia, vocally opposed the progression of a substantive outcome.
Following on from this, Brazil’s NBSAP states that its vision for tackling nature loss is “aligned” with its UN climate plan, known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC).
In addition, the NBSAP states that Brazil is taking a “holistic approach to addressing the existing crises of climate change and biodiversity loss in a synergistic manner”.
It lists several targets that could help to address both environmental problems, including ending deforestation, promoting sustainable agriculture and restoring ecosystems.
Brazil joins a small number of countries, including Panama and the UK, that have taken steps to bring their actions to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss into alignment.
The country seeks to ‘substantially increase’ nature finance from a range of sources
According to target 19 of the NBSAP, the Brazilian government will “develop and initiate” a national strategy to finance the actions laid out in the document by the end of 2026.
This financial plan “should aim to substantially increase…the volume of financial resources” for implementing the NBSAP.
These resources should come in the form of federal, state and municipal funding, international finance, private funding and incentives for preserving biodiversity, the document continues.
The accompanying action plan includes a number of specific mechanisms, which could be used to finance efforts to tackle nature loss. These include biodiversity credits, a regulated carbon market and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility.
Separately, the NBSAP sets out a goal in target 18 of identifying “subsidies and economic and fiscal incentives that are directly harmful to biodiversity” by the end of this year. Those identified subsidies should then be reduced or eliminated by 2030, it adds.
The document notes that the phaseout of harmful subsidies should be accompanied by an increase in incentives for “conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity”.
The NBSAP does “important work” in translating the targets of the GBF into “ambitious targets” in the national context, says Oscar Soria, co-founder and chief executive of civil-society organisation the Common Initiative.
Soria tells Carbon Brief:
“While the document is laudable on many aspects and its implementation would change things for the better, the concrete financial means to make it a reality – funding it and halting the funding of activities going against it – are still lacking. In this regard, this NBSAP is a good example of the GBF’s problem at the global level.
“The hardest part of political negotiations will begin only now: in 2026, the Brazilian government will have to evaluate the cost of implementing the NBSAP and where finance will come from.”
Brazil’s plans for agriculture include ‘sustainable intensification’
Brazil is one of the world’s leading food producers, meeting 10% of global demand, according to its NBSAP.
It is also the world’s largest grower of soya beans and the second-largest cattle producer.
However, agriculture is also a major driver of biodiversity loss in Brazil, largely due to the clearing of rainforest or other lands for soya growing and cattle ranching. Agriculture itself is also affected by biodiversity loss, particularly the loss of pollinators. The NBSAP says:
“Biodiversity loss directly undermines agricultural production and human well-being, demonstrating that agriculture, other productive activities and biodiversity conservation are interdependent rather than antagonistic.”
Brazil’s NBSAP addresses sustainable agriculture in target 10A, which aims to “ensure that, by 2030, areas under agriculture, livestock, aquaculture and forestry are managed sustainably and integrated into the landscape”.
It lists several approaches to achieving sustainable production, including agroecology, regenerative agriculture and sustainable intensification.
Targets seven and 10B also pertain to food systems. Target seven seeks to reduce the impacts of pollution, including nutrient loss and pesticides, on biodiversity, while target 10B commits to the sustainable fishing and harvesting of other aquatic resources.
In 2021, Brazil launched its national low-carbon agriculture strategy, known as the ABC+ plan. The plan promotes sustainability in the agricultural sector through both adaptation and mitigation actions.
Brazil conducted a largest-of-its-kind consultation process before releasing its NBSAP
Brazil was among the majority of nations to miss the UN deadline to submit a new NBSAP before the COP16 biodiversity summit in Colombia in October 2024.
At the time, a representative from the Brazilian government said that it was unable to meet the deadline because it was embarking on an ambitious consultation process for its NBSAP.
Braulio Dias, director of biodiversity conservation at the Brazilian Ministry of Environment, who is responsible for the NBSAP process, told Carbon Brief and the Guardian in 2024:
“Brazil is a huge country with the largest share of biodiversity [and] a large population with a complex governance. We are a federation with 26 states and 5,570 municipalities. We started the process to update our NBSAP in May last year and have managed to conclude a broad consultation process involving over a thousand people in face-to-face meetings.
“We are in the process of consolidating all proposals received, consulting all the departments of the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, all the federal ministries and agencies engaged in the biodiversity agenda and the National Biodiversity Committee, before we can have a high-level political endorsement.
“Then we still have to build a monitoring strategy, a finance strategy and a communication strategy. We will only conclude this process toward the end of the year or early next year.”
In its NBSAP, the Brazilian government says it engaged with around 200 scientific and civil society organisations and 110 Indigenous representatives while preparing its NBSAP.
Around one-third of the Amazon is protected by Indigenous territories.
Indigenous peoples in Brazil have continuously called for more inclusion in UN processes to tackle climate change and nature loss, including by holding multiple demonstrations during the COP30 climate summit in November.
Michel Santos, public policy manager at WWF Brazil, says that many in Brazil’s civil society were pleased with the NBSAP’s extensive consultation process, telling Carbon Brief:
“Brazilian civil society is very happy with everything. It was a long process with broad participation. It took a while to be completed, but we consider the result quite satisfactory.”
The post Brazil’s biodiversity pledge: Six key takeaways for nature and climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Brazil’s biodiversity pledge: Six key takeaways for nature and climate change
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
-
IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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