Cop: Brazil wants more debate on fossil fuel phase out

The phasing out of fossil fuels is a "huge" topic at the Cop 28 UN climate summit and still needs to be clearly debated, according to Brazil's chief climate negotiator Andre Correa do Lago.

The discussion has domestic and international dimensions, do Lago said, adding that the current international debate over whether fossil fuels should be phased out lacks structure. "People are talking about consumption, about abatement and many different solutions and proposals," he said. "I think this has to be very clearly debated".

Among those countries that support the inclusion of language on fossil fuels in the negotiated Cop text — whether it be a phase out or phase down, unabated or all — there is currently no united position, and this could undermine the discussions.

Do Lago also called for national debates on fossil fuels to see "what countries can do individually in their territories". He suggested that Brazil needs to have a democratic discussion on the topic. "We have to have a very important debate in Brazil to see how we deal with this issues internally," he said, adding that international and domestic discussions need to happen in parallel.

Meanwhile, Brazil's deputy minister of environment and climate change Joao Paulo Capobianco called for a dialogue between oil and gas producing countries, including discussions on alternatives to oil. Brazil has some strong options such as biofuels and green hydrogen, he said.

"I don't believe that the voluntary action of one country alone is enough, what we need to do is to have an international understanding if we are going to discuss phasing out fossil fuels," Capobianco said. "This is something we are willing to discuss but we need to consider alternatives".

Brazil's oil and gas production was 4.5mn b/d of oil equivalent (boe/d) in October, according to the country's hydrocarbons regulator ANP. At the Cop 28 summit last week, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said his country will join the Opec+ alliance to urge other oil-producing nations to move away from fossil fuels to more sustainable alternatives. But despite the government's push to increase investment in renewable energy, Lula's administration is working to develop oil and gas reserves in the environmentally sensitive Equatorial Margin off the coast of the Amazon forest.

Brazil said it wants to use oil revenues to finance clean energy development. It is aiming to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 48pc by 2025, from a 2005 baseline — equivalent to 1.34bn t CO2e — and by 53pc by 2030. Capobianco stressed that Brazil is working on deforestation to help hit its emissions reduction targets and is also developing plans for all GHG emitting sectors, citing progress in the agribusiness sector.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon basin fell by 22.3pc from August 2022 to July 2023, compared with a year earlier, according to data released by Brazil's national institute of space research. Deforestation in August 21 to July 2022 was 11pc lower than a year earlier.

By Caroline Varin