Mixed Signals on Sustainable Development in Brazil?
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from David Hone, Climate Change Adviser for Shell.
I have been in Sao Paulo this week at Sustentavel 2009, perhaps the premiere Sustainable Development event in Brazil, if not all of South America. At the opening I represented the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and then on the first day of presentations I participated in the main climate change panel session.
What is clear is that there is a passion in Brazil for sustainability – from the huge issues they face in the Amazon region to the road congestion in Sao Paulo. Talking with delegates at Sustentavel, it is also clear that the country faces an interesting future in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
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According to the IEA, in 2006 fossil energy CO2 emissions in Brazil were 332 million tonnes. Reportedly (from delegates at the conference), this represents some 25% of overall CO2 emissions in Brazil, which puts emissions from deforestation at about 1 billion tonnes per annum and total emissions at some 1.3 billion tonnes. Such a figure, if correct, would put total Brazilian emissions at about the level of Japan and India.
From an energy perspective (i.e. putting to one side for the moment emissions from deforestation) Brazil is one of a handful of countries globally that is managing a development pathway that is compatible with a 450 ppm trajectory – i.e. keeping emissions below 2 tonnes per-capita even as it continues to develop. Although emissions per-capita have risen since 1970, there has been a plateau of sorts more recently. Brazil has achieved this through its large-scale use of renewables, namely hydroelectricity and biomass, the latter both as a source for transport fuel (ethanol) and electricity. Although CO2/KWhr jumped from 50 gms to 88 gms between 1990 and 2000, it fell back to 81 gms in 2006.
Looking forward, continued expansion of hydroelectricity is under pressure. Although only 30% of theoretical capacity has been utilised, new projects are taking some 10 years to complete owing to increasingly stringent permitting requirements. Meeting future electricity demand may mean that the country needs to draw increasingly on alternative sources, particularly natural gas which is being discovered offshore. CO2 emissions from natural gas use more than doubled between 2000 and 2006.
