Lira green package dehydrates and benefits polluters – 11/30/2023 – Market

The package of environmental measures articulated by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), received provisions that dehydrate the sustainable nature of the proposals and also grant benefits to polluting activities.

Lira’s intention was to get the country to COP28, the UN (World Organization of the United Nations) global climate conference that begins this Thursday (30), carrying the package as one of its flags.

In practice, however, the COP will begin with an agenda full of items that distance it from environmental objectives and pending votes in both the Chamber and the Senate. Among the main items on the agenda, the creation of a regulated carbon market (with obligations for polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) has not yet been delivered.

The project to encourage green hydrogen — a fuel that does not generate a greenhouse effect and is obtained through renewable energy — was one of the only ones approved by the Chamber so far, on Tuesday (28). The text still needs a vote in the Senate, but it advanced to the neighboring House with a reduction in benefits for the production of the input and fewer sources of financing for the sector’s incentive fund.

As for offshore wind farms, as shown by Sheetwas approved on Wednesday (29) with a series of tortoises that could favor the gas sector and coal power plants — intensive emitters of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.

“The tortoises go against the grain of the technical and economic evolution of the electrical matrix and against global climate challenges,” said the Clean Energy Coalition and the Climate Observatory in a statement.

The approval of the offshore wind farm framework had a favorable vote from 403 deputies — among them, the former Minister of the Environment of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Ricardo Salles (PL-SP). The parliamentarian defended the text publicly in the plenary.

“[A proposta] has been following the principle of, firstly, defending the ecological agenda, the economic agenda, administrative logic, but on the other hand, also respecting fundamental guarantees”, he stated, as the first parliamentarian to defend the matter.

Representative Glauber Braga (PSOL-RJ) contested the project and said that the House was not discussing changing the energy matrix from fossil fuel to renewable energy. “Let us pay attention to the tortoises raised by the rapporteur on this matter,” he said.

Braga was even mocked by Lira when the PSOL member said that the Ministry of the Environment would be averse to approving the matter. “I don’t know if it helps or hinders”, joked Lira, in response, under protest from left-wing deputies.

In the latest versions of the text on wind farms, a device was included, at the request of PSOL, that provides for the application of Marine Spatial Planning (PEM), a mechanism that aims to protect the aquatic ecosystem in areas where energy is exploited.

Another text under discussion, that of the carbon credit market, passed the Senate in October, leaving out the reduction obligations for agribusiness — the main emitter of carbon dioxide in Brazil, considering deforestation as a result of the activity.

The rapporteur in the Chamber, Aliel Machado (PV-PR), even made a proposal to include the sector within the regulated carbon market, giving agriculture a series of special conditions and a longer period to adapt to the new rules.

In addition to this point of divergence, the possibility of including a provision allowing state governments to control the carbon market — an idea that has Helder Barbalho from Pará among its guarantors — also generated an impasse.

The proposal is considered the most important of the package, since the carbon market is one of the central themes of this year’s COP. The non-approval leaves Brazil behind international peers in the midst of the event, considered important in the strategy of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to boost the country as an environmental power.

The main projects

Carbon credit, PL 412/22
Creates the basic rules for the functioning of the carbon credit market in Brazil, stipulating emission limits

Offshore wind farms, PL 576/21
Stipulates standards for installing wind farms on the Brazilian coast, seen as having high energy potential

Green hydrogen, PL 2308/23
Defines the different types of low-carbon hydrogen, creates an activity development program and provides a national policy for the area

Biofuels, PL 4516/23
It intends to create legislation to promote sustainable and low-carbon mobility, encouraging the production of fuels with a lower environmental impact