Brazil has no set timeline to publish its roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, the environment ministry's secretary for climate change Aloisio de Melo told Argus.
Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on 8 December asked the energy, environment and finance ministries to draft a resolution by February mapping out the phase-out of fossil fuels. That had followed Lula's previous calls to create an international plan to move away from fossil fuels during a leaders' summit only a few days before the UN Cop 30 climate summit held in November in Brazil.
But the call did not make it to the summit's final decision despite backing´from over 80 countries. Instead, the Cop 30 presidency pledged to create a roadmap on the issue outside of official negotiations.
But the Brazilian ministries never published the resolution requested by Lula. Instead, the plan has been submitted to the national energy policy council, which will be responsible for developing it, de Melo said in the sidelines of the First Conference on the Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, being held in Santa Marta, Colombia, from 24-29 April.
The process to draft Brazil's roadmap has many moving parts and will "involve a lot of dialogue", de Melo said.
"It's a process and we're not simplifying the approach," he said. "It's not just a matter of having big long-term goals, but of having a real trajectory with clear milestones, instruments, means and so on," which is "much more complex", he he said.
One of the discussions surrounding the roadmap is its timeline, de Melo said, adding that the process "will take quite a bit of time" because it needs to have "a strong, solid institutional base that truly integrates with Brazil's energy planning".
"It's not about having a document with some grand speeches and messages, but something that is actually consistent, solid and guiding over time and that transcends presidential administrations", he said.
Phasing out fossil fuels could run counter to Brazil's plans of increasing crude production. It produces around 4mn b/d of crude, making it one of the 10 largest producers globally, according to its hydrocarbon regulator ANP. The country plans to expand crude output to 5.3mn b/d by 2030, according to energy research bureau Epe, hinging on new exploratory frontiers such as the southern Pelotas basin and the environmentally sensitive equatorial margin.
But the production goals and the roadmap can coexist, de Melo said.
The plan will focus on some decarbonization solutions that are "more or less ready and actionable" such as biofuels, he said. "But there are other solutions that are in the development and finalization phase."
Additionally, Brazil's planned production growth will not take place in the short term, he said. So there is time to see how fossil fuels, mainly for transportation, will be used in a cleaner energy matrix over time.
