Hosting a COP in the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, has raised hopes that this year’s UN climate summit in Brazil will be free from the shadow of fossil fuels, after the last two were held in major oil-producing countries. But even as Brazil faces extreme heat and flooding, its government has signalled it wants to extract more climate-warming oil.
“I dream of a day when we no longer need fossil fuels, but that day is still far away. Humanity will depend on them for a long time,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said last week during a speech in Belém, the capital of Pará and the host city for November’s COP30.
This Tuesday, Brazil’s National Energy Policy Council, which brings together federal ministers, approved the Latin American nation’s entry into the Charter of Cooperation (CoC) between oil-producing countries, a discussion forum linked to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+).
It provides a platform to “facilitate dialogue and exchange views regarding conditions and developments in the global oil and energy markets”, according to OPEC. Despite lacking binding obligations, Brazil’s entry into the CoC has brought backlash from climate groups.
“This is a disappointing setback for everyone who relies on the Brazilian government to lead a just transition away from fossil fuel exploration—an essential step if we are to survive on this planet,” said André Guimarães, director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).
According to a report by the climate campaign group 350.org, Brazil became the third-largest country in terms of investment in expanding its oil and gas sector last year, shortly after countries agreed at the COP28 in Dubai to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
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Fossil fuel growth
If Brazil were to maintain only the oil wells it currently has in operation, the country’s production would decline by 64% by 2035. However, with new exploration projects set to be licensed, Brazil’s oil production is expected to increase by 36% in the next decade, according to analysis by 350.org based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data.
President Lula responded to criticism that his support for oil would tarnish Brazil’s leadership at COP30. “Look at the United States; see if France is worried. No, they are exploiting as much as they can. It’s England exploiting [oil] in Guyana and France in Suriname,” he said, pointing out that neighbouring countries are already profiting from oil in the Amazon region, working with Europe-based multinationals.
In his speeches, Lula has argued that the profits from new oil explorations will be used to finance the energy transition. However, this claim has been met with skepticism and sarcasm from environmentalists.
“It’s like recommending smoking twice as much to raise more money for lung cancer treatment,” mocks Caetano Scannavino, from the Amazonian NGO Saúde e Alegria.
In 2010, the Lula government passed a law stipulating that revenues from oil exploration in the pre-salt fields—a new source of wealth for Brazil at the time—would be invested in health and education. However, amid an economic crisis in the following years, the government redirected those funds to cover other expenses such as public debt.
Amazon oil
Since taking office for his third non-consecutive term, Lula’s government has been seeking an environmental license to drill an exploratory oil well in the Foz do Amazonas Basin, located along the coast of Amapá state, in an area of extreme environmental sensitivity.
The license was denied early in his administration, in May 2023. Experts at IBAMA (the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, the federal government’s environmental agency) concluded that Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, had failed to present a solid impact mitigation and emergency response plan.
Additionally, IBAMA’s President Rodrigo Agostinho noted the risks of exploring the area without first conducting a Sedimentary Area Environmental Assessment (AAAS). This includes an assessment of sensitive ecosystems, biodiversity hotspots and affected communities to determine potential environmental and social impacts.
Since then, three ministers – Alexandre Padilha for Institutional Relations, Rui Costa who is Chief of Staff, and Alexandre Silveira for Mines and Energy – have been negotiating a political agreement with the Ministry of the Environment, led by Marina Silva.
Seen as a roadblock by other ministries, Silva has repeatedly stated that IBAMA’s decision will be purely technical. However, sources within the government told Climate Home that the license is expected to be granted by the end of March.
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Pressure from above
Even if IBAMA’s technical staff reject Petrobras’ revised plans, the agency’s leadership could still approve the drilling under political pressure from the president himself. Lula has been considering replacing IBAMA’s current president and has reportedly been eyeing Márcio Macêdo, a close ally who currently heads the General Secretariat of the Presidency.
“We can’t keep up this back-and-forth with IBAMA, which is a government agency but seems to act against the government,” Lula said last week during an interview to Diário FM, a local radio in Amapá state.
The environmental public servants’ association, Ascema, responded to that declaration with a letter stating that political pressure is unacceptable and that evaluations take the time needed to assess potential environmental and social impacts, as well as mitigation or compensation measures.
“The attempt to fast-track the approval of high-impact projects without due adherence to technical and scientific procedures threatens not only the integrity of Brazil’s ecosystems but also the rights of traditional populations and local communities directly affected by these decisions,” stated the Brazilian Forum of NGOs for the Environment.
Pressure to fast-track environmental licensing for large infrastructure projects, such as hydroelectric dams and highways, has already left a stain on the left-wing administrations of Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff. The most emblematic case was the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Pará state in the Amazon.
In 2011, the approval of its environmental license led to the dismissal of IBAMA’s president. The project significantly impacted the Xingu River, a large tributary of the Amazon River, and Indigenous communities who depended on the river were not consulted. The violation of their rights was later recognised by Brazil’s Supreme Court.
Recently, due to the variability of the region’s hydrological regime combined with an undersized reservoir infrastructure, the dam has been operating at less than half of its projected power generation capacity, calling into question the economic rationale of the project.
Weakening studies
Now, the government aims to speed up environmental approval for drilling in the Foz do Amazonas basin by weakening IBAMA’s evaluation process. Through legal opinions issued by the Attorney General’s Office, the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) has successfully narrowed the scope of the environmental assessment.
One of its main arguments was that IBAMA cannot require mitigation measures for noise pollution caused by aircraft in the region, despite complaints from Indigenous communities that disturbances have scared away game animals essential to their way of life.
Another requirement that was legally overturned was the demand for a Sedimentary Area Environmental Assessment, a tool the MME has resisted implementing, since it could identify areas where oil exploration should be restricted.
With much of the licensing process stripped down, IBAMA’s final decision now hinges on the company’s emergency response plan. The initial denial of Petrobras’ request was based, among other criteria, on the absence of a plan to rescue wildlife in the event of an oil spill.
In response, the company built a wildlife rescue centre on the coast of Amapá state. This plan remains the last pending issue, and its approval will determine whether the license is granted.
Government officials at the Ministry of Environment told Climate Home they fear that the issuance of the license could send a crucial signal to potential fossil fuel investors in the region, as the National Petroleum Agency has already announced it will auction another 47 oil blocks in the same area of the Foz do Amazonas basin in June.
The post Lula’s government pushes for new oil drilling in the Amazon – where it plans to host COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Lula’s government pushes for new oil drilling in the Amazon – where it will host COP30
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The clean energy sector is showing resilience despite challenges thrown at it by a hostile White House, a recent report found. A string of legal victories has further dampened the Trump administration’s efforts to halt wind and solar power.
The Trump administration has abandoned its effort to halt wind energy projects across the United States and dropped its challenge to the court ruling that tossed President Donald Trump’s order freezing federal permitting and leasing for wind projects. States that challenged the order hailed the development as one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition.
Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges
Amid reports that the government could weaken the UK’s electric vehicle (EV) targets, Carbon Brief analysis reveals the nation’s EV drivers are saving more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs, compared with running a petrol car.
Battery EVs (BEVs) are roughly four times more efficient than combustion-engine cars, making them far cheaper to run – particularly since the Iran crisis caused a spike in fossil-fuel prices.
The savings from driving BEVs are also more than three times higher than for “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs), which evidence shows are mostly driven with their combustion engines.
In total, the more than 2m BEVs, 1m PHEVs and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are saving drivers around £3bn a year, Carbon Brief’s analysis shows, as illustrated in the figure below.
In addition, these EVs are avoiding the need for nearly 2.5bn litres of fuel and cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 7m tonnes each year.
Despite recent news that EVs are now cheaper to buy than petrol cars, as well as having far lower running costs, BBC News says the government is “set to water down” its EV sales targets.
The broadcaster explains that the current goal, under the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, is for 80% of new car sales to be BEVs by 2030.
It says that the government is set to consult on weakening this to between 50% and 70%, following “lobbying” by carmakers and trade unions.
According to the Sunday Times, prime minister Keir Starmer “is understood to have overruled the energy secretary [Ed Miliband] after sustained pressure from industry, the Unite union and Peter Kyle, the business secretary”.
The car industry has consistently claimed there is insufficient demand for BEVs to meet the targets under the ZEV mandate, yet the government says manufacturers have “over-complied” to date. Independent analysts say the industry is on track to continue beating the ZEV mandate goals.
The industry has been able to beat its targets by using a wide range of “flexibilities”, which were introduced after a previous round of lobbying. These allow carmarkers to meet part of their EV targets by selling more efficient combustion cars, such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
The ZEV mandate is the single-largest part of the government’s plans to meet its legally binding climate goals over the next decade.
The advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) previously warned that the extra flexibilities would result in a larger number of hybrids being sold, at the expense of battery EVs.
When it consulted on the ZEV mandate in 2023, the then-Conservative government noted that PHEVs do not deliver the cost and CO2 savings they are advertised with.
It pointed to “dramatic” differences between the performance of PHEVs in test cycles and what they deliver under real-world conditions.
In practice, less than a third of miles driven in PHEVs are fuelled by electricity, with petrol making up the rest. As a result, cost and CO2 savings from BEVs are three times larger than for PHEVs.
The post Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total
Civil society groups have called for an investigation into the first carbon credits approved under a new UN mechanism, alleging the project is linked to Myanmar’s military junta – which the UN says is guilty of human rights abuses – and has “massively” overstated its climate impact.
The programme, which aims to cut emissions by distributing efficient cookstoves across Myanmar, received approval to issue around 650,000 carbon credits from the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body in February, in a landmark moment for the Paris Agreement’s carbon market. Only two projects have been given the green light by the mechanism’s regulator so far.
But two reports published last week, led by the Global Forest Coalition and Brussels-based NGO Carbon Market Watch, raised serious concerns about the project’s implementation in conflict zones where civilians have faced airstrikes and mass displacement as well as its emission-reduction calculations.
Project continued after military coup
Myanmar has been ravaged by a brutal civil war since the country’s military overthrew the democratically elected government in a coup d’état in February 2021. The military regime has attacked civilian populations, persecuted ethnic minorities and committed widespread sexual violence, among other serious human rights violations, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar said in April.
The cookstove programme started in 2018 under the previous UN-run carbon offsetting scheme – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – as a partnership between Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) and the Climate Change Center (CCC), a South Korean NGO, with investment from private South Korean firms.
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The project continued operating after the coup. For most of the period between 2021 and 2022 in which the issued credits were generated, MONREC was led by Colonel Khin Maung Yi, who was sanctioned by the European Union in 2021 for supporting the military regime, the Global Forest Coalition report said.
CCC acknowledged engaging with government authorities after the coup but said this “should not be interpreted as political endorsement” of the junta. The South Korean NGO added that abandoning the programme when political circumstances changed “would not necessarily have been the most responsible outcome for the households involved”.
Conflict prevents on the ground verification
The Global Forest Coalition report raised particular concerns about the project’s implementation in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, including Sagaing Region, an anti-junta resistance stronghold that has been most heavily affected by the conflict and routinely targeted by airstrikes and violent attacks. The region accounts for more than a third of Myanmar’s 3.8 million internally displaced people.
The NGOs said that, in addition to ethical concerns about carbon credits being produced by the military government in an area actively affected by its attacks, this raises questions over the ability to effectively verify the climate integrity of the projects.
Before carbon credits are issued, external auditors need to validate the claims made by project developers and confirm that the emission reductions claimed are correct. This process usually includes site visits to a representative sample of households to check how the improved cookstoves are being used.
But, because of the “volatile political situation” in Myanmar, the auditing team was not able to leave the capital Yangon and could only speak to project participants remotely via Zoom, project documents show.
“Due to ongoing armed conflict on the ground, the data currently used to justify carbon credit issuance in Sagaing by the Burmese military junta is unverifiable and highly likely fraudulent,” said Zaw Tuseng, founder and president of the Myanmar Policy Institute, which contributed to the report, in a written statement. “This demands an immediate suspension of credit transfers until a neutral, conflict-sensitive audit can be conducted.”
“Exceptional circumstances”
CCC told Climate Home News that, although it recognises that on-site verification is “generally preferable, particularly in complex operating environments”, the decision to opt for remote controls was not taken “as a discretionary shortcut, but as an approved alternative under exceptional circumstances”.
The South Korean NGO added that it reviewed the feasibility of the project at community level “on an ongoing basis” and it “did not identify conflict-related incidents that directly affected project implementation activities in participating communities during the monitoring period”.
A spokesperson for the UN climate change body told Climate Home News that, when site access is not possible, the UN carbon credit mechanism allows for “alternative verification approaches while still maintaining conservative assumptions and environmental integrity safeguards”. “These provisions ensure that crediting can only proceed where evidence is reliable,” they added.
Contested methodology
Carbon markets are seen as an important channel to raise money to help low-income communities in developing countries switch to less polluting cooking methods, both reducing CO2 emissions and improving air quality. But several cookstove offsetting projects have faced criticism from researchers and campaigners who argue that climate benefits are often exaggerated and weak monitoring can undermine claims of real emission reductions.
The project in Myanmar uses a contested methodology developed under the earlier Kyoto Protocol that was rejected last year by The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a watchdog that issues quality labels to carbon credit types, because it found it “insufficiently rigorous”.
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After transitioning from the CDM to the new mechanism, the project was required to apply “more conservative” assumptions to calculate emission reductions, which resulted in 40% fewer credits being issued, according to the UN climate change body.
“The result is consistent with environmental integrity requirements and ensures that each credited tonne genuinely represents a tonne reduced and contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, which oversees the mechanism, said in February.
Too many credits issued
But Carbon Market Watch claimed in a second report last week that, despite the adjustment, the project is still likely to issue seven times more credits than its real climate impact justifies, comparing its calculations with values from peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The biggest driver of the credit inflation, the group said, is the failure to account for “stacking” – the widespread practice of households using multiple stoves at the same time, including more polluting ones the project does not monitor.
Peer-reviewed science considers a stacking rate of 68% a conservative assumption, but the methodology used by the Myanmar programme makes no allowance for it at all, the report said.
CCC disputed those findings. In a written response to Climate Home News, it said the project was developed under methodologies approved within the UN climate framework and that external recalculations by researchers are not “determinative of the level of crediting achieved”.
The credits are expected to be used primarily by major South Korean polluters to meet obligations under the country’s emissions trading system – a move that will also enable the government to count those units toward emissions reduction targets in its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the UN climate body told Climate Home News.
Myanmar will use the remaining credits to achieve in part the goals of its own national climate plan under the Paris Agreement.
“Over-crediting, at any magnitude, cannot be compatible with the climate ambition of a world striving to limit global warming to 1.5ºC,” said Isa Mulder, an expert at Carbon Market Watch.
The post UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns
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