Brazil’s fossil fuel roadmap sketches out first global timetable

Brazil has proposed a voluntary timetable to speed up the world’s transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF), fulfilling the promise it made to draw up the first global roadmap at last year’s UN climate summit in Belém.

Through a “TAFF Mutirão”, named after the Indigenous Brazilian term for collective effort, the COP30 presidency sets out three stages for cutting the world’s reliance on oil, gas and coal up to 2033.

Countries are first encouraged to draw up national transition plans by 2028 in time to feed into the next global stocktake, the UN’s five-yearly review of progress on climate action. During the same period, Brazil’s blueprint suggests governments could take early steps such as reforming fossil fuel subsidies or stopping methane leaks at oil and gas sites.

In 2029 and 2030, Brazil sees the focus shifting to building an alternative energy system, by prioritising clean power, electric transport and heating, more efficient energy use and by rolling out the power grids and batteries that support them.

Only in the final stage, from 2031 to 2033, does the roadmap expect the main push to reduce fossil fuel production. By then, it argues, falling use of fossil fuels should allow producers to “adjust and diversify supply in step with demand”.

The roadmap acknowledges that fossil fuel demand must fall “substantially faster” to meet the 1.5C temperature goal, but warns that cutting supply too early would drive up prices and risk “losing societal support for the transition”.

Coordinated agenda

Pedro Brancante, a senior official at the Brazilian Foreign Ministry and one of the authors of the roadmap, said the document proposes both a global, coordinated agenda and accelerated action at the national level.

He told a webinar hosted by Climate Home News that Brazil sees the roadmap as a tool to organise the discussions around the fossil fuel phase-out and help that debate develop further without getting stuck on definitions or the different responsibilities of particular countries.

The COP30 presidency offered to draw up the roadmap in the dying hours of the Belém summit. A push by about 80 countries to start that work within the formal negotiations had been blocked by some fossil fuel-producing nations.

The 182-page document does not name any countries and it sets no deadlines for winding down fossil fuel production. But it offers countries a self-assessment tool to score themselves on how heavily they depend on fossil fuels and what capacity they have to move away from them.

Fossil fuel “archetypes”

Across energy demand, supply and the wider economy, countries can place themselves in one of 12 “archetypes”, each with its own suggested first steps.

For example, countries where transport, industry and homes still run mostly on fossil fuels, and where energy demand is growing fast, are urged to meet that growth with electric and other low-emissions options rather than locking in new fossil fuel use. Major oil and gas producers with strong institutions and good renewable resources are told to manage an “orderly transition” of their production while expanding clean energy, then to redirect their infrastructure and skills toward new energy industries.

COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago told journalists on Tuesday that countries need to recognise themselves in the categories and use the frameworks as “food for thought” to plan the next steps.

COP30 CEO Ana Toni added that the presidency limited its time horizon to 2033 and did not try to think about 2050 or 2060 because “there is an urgency and these are short-term measures” that all countries can act upon now.

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Brazil has yet to publish its own national roadmap away from fossil fuels. Officials said on Tuesday it had been expected by the end of last year and is still awaiting approval from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Lula, who was recently re-elected, has backed the expansion of oil and gas exploration. In August, after Petrobras struck oil off the coast near the mouth of the Amazon River, he said drilling along Brazil’s northern coast could be “a passport to the country’s future”.

“Valuable blueprint”

The release of the roadmap was largely welcomed by analysts and campaigners.

Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at Oil Change International, said Brazil has offered “a valuable blueprint” for the fossil fuel phase-out, adding that while “there is not one-size-fits-all pathway”, all countries need to plan their transition now.

But he warned that suggesting that a reduction in fossil fuel supply could wait until the 2030s would be “a grave mistake” and guarantee a “chaotic transition”.

Smoke rises from Yatagan thermal power plant near southwestern town of Yatagan in Mugla province, Turkey, February 24, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas) Smoke rises from Yatagan thermal power plant near southwestern town of Yatagan in Mugla province, Turkey, February 24, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas)

Kat Paterson, programme lead for Global Clean Power Diplomacy at E3G, said the roadmap puts the fossil fuel transition at the heart of both global climate cooperation and national economic planning.

“As governments head to Antalya, the task is now for the COP31 Presidency to carry Brazil’s work forward, and for countries to demonstrate their own plans to develop national roadmaps as pathways towards clean, resilient economies,” she added.

Turkey, which hosts COP31 from next Monday, and Australia, which will preside over the negotiations, have not said whether or how they will take the roadmap forward at the summit.

At the press conference in Brasilia, the Brazilian officials stressed that the roadmap represents a call for action and not a formal document that needs to be adopted in the official talks.

“We are not suggesting negotiations, we are not suggesting the creation of a new entity,” said Corrêa do Lago. “Everything is around implementation, around institutions and processes in place that already exist and have been agreed beforehand.”

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