The Brazil low carbon country case study by the World Bank offers a significant exploration into the potential for Brazil to foster economic development whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The overall aim of this study was to support Brazil’s efforts to identify opportunities to reduce its emissions in ways that foster economic development. The primary objective was to provide the Brazilian government the technical inputs needed to assess the potential and conditions for low carbon development in key emitting sectors.

To this end, the World Bank study adopted a programmatic approach in line with the Brazilian government’s long-term development objectives, as follows:

• (i) anticipate the future evolution of Brazil‘s GHG emissions to establish a reference scenario;
• (ii) identify and quantify lower carbon-intensive options to mitigate emissions, as well as potential options for carbon uptake;
• (iii) assess the costs of these low carbon options, identify barriers to their adoption, and explore measures to overcome them; and
• (iv) build a low carbon emissions scenario that meets the same development expectations.

The team also analyzed the macroeconomic effects of shifting from the reference scenario to the low-carbon one and the financing required.

This study uses the Brazilian Government’s four key development areas (LULUCF ‐ {Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry}, energy, transport and waste management) to focus on and examine the current systems that generate carbon emission in these sectors.

The report then analyses the conditions required for large‐scale decarbonization of the sectors to 2030 by providing technical and analytical elements for emissions reductions.  Following this, the study analyzes the options from both a macro and micro‐economic perspective, presents a national low carbon scenario for Brazil and then provides financing options to achieve the scenario.

The final section identifies the other structural and institutional changes that will be required in Brazil to meet the low‐carbon scenario.

Read Brazil low carbon country case study.