USA and Brazil announce clean energy partnership

The USA embassy in Brazil has put out an astonishing statement titled ‘Establishing a Climate-Forward Clean Energy Industrial Partnership’ between the two countries, just weeks before a new President.

In what must be one of the last strategic policy announcements of the outgoing Biden administration, the statement declares that the USA and Brazil have ‘immense potential to lead the global energy transition on some of its most promising points’. It then itemises a range of collaborations between Brazilian and United States organisations, targeting three main areas:

• Clean energy production and deployment: accelerate and expand clean energy production and deployment, particularly to harness Brazil and the United States’ vast clean and renewable resources, including wind, solar, hydropower, and potentially, other biocapacity resources. This would accelerate efforts to decarbonize the power, transportation, and industrial sectors.
• Clean energy technology supply chain development: increase cooperation on innovation, workforce training, and project development for clean technologies, including efforts to manufacture solar and wind components, long-duration storage batteries, and zero and low-emission vehicles and components; produce clean hydrogen; increase production, processing, and recycling of critical minerals; and scale carbon management technologies.
• Green industrialization: advance efforts to decarbonize manufacturing and industrial sectors writ large to attract investments from global companies, and drive closer coordination across Brazilian and U.S. private sector partners to achieve net-zero emissions in their supply chains, as well as position our companies to effectively compete in a world where global trade will increasingly account for embedded emissions

This would herald an historic change of policy for Brazil, which under President Bolsonaro until 2022 was a poster boy for climate change denial, uncontrolled deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, removal of environmental protection measures and pro fossil fuel policies.

The implications for the USA under a new President are less clear.

More on Brazil’s energy strategy at https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2629473-brazil-looks-beyond-forests-to-reduce-co2