- New Energy Outlook: Brazil details the decarbonization pathways for Brazil’s energy transition to 2050
- Brazil requires multiple technology pathways to reach net zero, including electrification, carbon capture, hydrogen, bioenergy and clean power
- BNEF sees electrification as the key driver of carbon abatement, mainly in road transport and in hard-to-abate industries
Sao Paulo, February 20, 2025 – Brazil needs to rapidly scale its decarbonization efforts to become a net-zero economy by 2050, according to New Energy Outlook: Brazil, released today by BloombergNEF (BNEF). The report builds on the results of BNEF’s flagship New Energy Outlook 2024 and examines Brazil’s decarbonization trajectory using bottom-up modeling across the power, transport, industry and buildings sectors through 2050.
The report draws on BNEF’s latest energy and climate scenarios to analyze Brazil’s energy-related emissions, which account for half of the country’s total emissions; agriculture (excluding land use), land-use change and forestry contribute to the remaining half. Within Brazil’s energy sector, transport accounts for 53% of emissions, followed by industry at 25%, power and energy combined at 11%, and buildings at 6%.
Under BNEF’s Net Zero Scenario (NZS), which maps a path to net-zero emissions globally by 2050, the investment required for the country to meet net zero is $6 trillion between today and mid-century. Yet this is only 8% higher than the spending required under BNEF’s base-case Economic Transition Scenario (ETS), which describes how the energy sector evolves as a result of cost-based technology changes and assumes no additional policy interventions are made. Two-thirds of NZS investment is on the energy demand side, particularly in electric vehicle sales.
Brazil’s net-zero future requires a range of different technologies, with electrification serving as the primary driver in the country’s efforts to decarbonize. From 2040 onward, electrification becomes the leading force behind emissions abatement, mainly in the decarbonization of road transport, buildings and industry. Electrification alone is responsible for 55% of emissions reductions between now and 2050, compared with a ‘no transition’ scenario in which decarbonization and energy efficiency remain stagnant.
Additional key net-zero pathways include carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen and bioenergy, which together account for 27% of emissions reductions, mainly in end-use sectors. Transport accounts for over half of 2050 hydrogen demand. Shipping and aviation combined reach 2.3 million metric tons of hydrogen demand in Brazil in 2050, although the fastest-growing category is for hydrogen as a cracking agent to produce bio-based sustainable aviation fuels.
Despite Brazil’s progress to date in decarbonizing power, under the ETS, clean power still accounts for 38% of emissions reductions between today and 2050. Prioritizing the rollout of mature technologies, such as wind and solar, continues to be a ‘no regrets’ policy option in the short term, based on an economic perspective.
Vinicius Nunes, lead author of the report, said, “Brazil has a clean electricity mix, which puts the country in a good position to decarbonize its economy by electrification. However, half of final energy use today still comes from fossil fuels. Some hard-to-abate sectors like aviation and steel require different solutions, and because of that, there is no net zero in Brazil without bioenergy, green hydrogen and carbon capture.”
- Other key findings of the report include:
Brazil’s hydrogen demand increases fivefold between today and 2050 in the NZS, reaching 8.3 million metric tons at mid-century. - Hard-to-abate sectors like steel, aluminum, cement and chemicals face difficulties decarbonizing in an economics-driven scenario without further policy intervention.
- Generous net-metering legislation has fueled a small-scale solar boom in Brazil. In the base-case scenario, installed solar capacity reaches 200 gigawatts by 2050.
This research forms part of a series of regional and sector reports diving deeper into results from BloombergNEF’s global New Energy Outlook report. Report summaries are available at about.bnef.com/new-energy-outlook-series.
Contact
Oktavia Catsaros
BloombergNEF
+1 212 617 9209
ocatsaros@bloomberg.net
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