A joint declaration with at least 47 countries promises to reallocate investments from fossil energy sources — such as oil, coal and gas — to renewable sources by 2030.
Published on Thursday (4) at COP26, the declaration has among its signatories the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom and Denmark. The reallocation proposal responds to one of the concerns of this climate conference: the flow of financing for the energy transition.
According to specialists linked to the British COP presidency, the financial sector’s announcements of divestment in projects with high emissions of greenhouse gases will not be enough, if the resources are not reallocated to renewable sources, completing the transition of the global energy matrix — where they are concentrated emissions of gases that cause global warming.
Under the title “Declaration on the transition from global coal to clean energy”, the one-page document contains four commitments. The main one is about ending the issuance of licenses for new coal-fired power generation projects, as well as their financing in other countries.
The other items in the declaration cite the investment to scale up renewable energy technologies, economically and socially support workers, sectors and communities affected by the end of coal investments, as well as support other countries for a global energy transition, foreseen in the document for happen by around 2030 in the largest economies and by 2040 in the rest of the world.
China, which is not among the signatories of the COP announcement, had announced in September that it would no longer fund international coal projects. The country, however, should still have a coal-based energy matrix in the coming years and expects to start reducing its emissions only at the end of the decade.
Although Brazil has an energy matrix considered clean, based on hydroelectric plants and because it has biofuels such as ethanol, the use of thermoelectric plants, based on fossil fuels such as coal, has increased in the last decade, both in water crises, such as that the country is currently facing, as well as in energy auctions and in the federal government’s energy planning. Brazil is not among the signatories of the energy transition at COP26.
However, Brazil would already be able to make the energy transition promised by the world. According to the Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy (Absolar), the installed capacity of solar energy in the country already exceeds that of thermoelectric plants.
Rio Grande do Sul, which concentrates more than 90% of the country’s coal reserves, has found resistance to mineral exploration. The Guaíba Mine project, in the metropolitan region of the state, was blocked by the courts and lost the support of Governor Eduardo Leite (PSDB), who this year began to defend the end of the use of coal.
According to Roberto Kishinami, coordinator of the Climate and Society Institute’s energy program, the declaration made by the countries must result in changes in the financing lines of the multilateral banks, through which most of the resources flow.
“In the Brazilian case, the financing of renewable energy occurs almost entirely through private channels”, he points out.
The journalist traveled at the invitation of Instituto Clima e Sociedade.
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