Brazil’s climate change negotiators are trying to throw the best hope for at-scale finance for stopping deforestation under the bus to ensure a big payday for bogus carbon credits from Amazon dams and other Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects  -- benefitting the scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás at the expense of the Amazon.

Brazil’s climate change negotiators are trying to throw the best hope for at-scale finance for stopping deforestation under the bus to ensure a big payday for bogus carbon credits from Amazon dams and other Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects  -- benefitting the scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás at the expense of the Amazon.

Brazil’s climate change negotiators are trying to throw the best hope for at-scale finance for stopping deforestation under the bus to ensure a big payday for bogus carbon credits from Amazon dams and other Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects  -- benefitting the scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás at the expense of the Amazon.

By Steve Schwartzman

Santo Antônio Dam under construction in the state of Rondônia, Brazil, 2009 | Photo: Wiki Commons

Brazil’s climate change negotiators are trying to throw the best hope for at-scale finance for stopping deforestation under the bus to ensure a big payday for bogus carbon credits from Amazon dams and other Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects  — benefitting the scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás at the expense of the Amazon. (See EDF and Brazilian partners report.) There are far better ways to combat climate change.

A Better Mousetrap

One of the best examples of how to do it, ironically, is what Brazil and Amazon states have actually done in reducing Amazon deforestation since 2004. Government ramped up enforcement, recognized indigenous territories and protected forests for other communities, and consumer goods companies like Walmart told their suppliers they needed zero-deforestation commodities. The result was a 70% reduction in deforestation by 2016 that kept 3.65 billion tons CO₂ out of the atmosphere – on the order of what the European Union achieved, only in one developing country. But positive incentives for forest protection called for repeatedly in legislation never materialized, so pushback from the big ranchers’ and farmers’ caucus in the Congress has put all of these gains at serious risk, and deforestation started to tick up again.

There is a lot at stake here, for the atmosphere as well as the forest. New research shows that much more cost effective climate change mitigation than anyone suspected – 11 billion tons of CO2 per year till 2030 — can come from “natural climate solutions”, mostly from stopping tropical deforestation and forest degradation. This is almost 40% of the mitigation needed by 2030 to have a 66% or better chance of keeping warming below 2°C, according to the authors.

Bringing jurisdictional reductions in deforestation and forest degradation into carbon markets could generate the funds that Brazil needs to end Amazon deforestation and effect the transformation to low-carbon sustainable agriculture. 

Reducing and ultimately stopping large-scale deforestation is fully feasible. We know this because Brazil and the Amazon states have done it. They have taken reductions targets below historical levels, and made world-leading reductions while increasing cattle and soy production – historically the major drivers of deforestation (Figure 1).  Making emissions reductions at the scale of a state or region or country is much more like the EU or California cap-and-trade systems than an offset project. It’s actually systemic climate change mitigation. Bringing jurisdictional reductions in deforestation and forest degradation into carbon markets could generate the funds that Brazil needs to end Amazon deforestation and effect the transformation to low-carbon sustainable agriculture. Transparent accounting, rigorous double-entry bookkeeping to avoid double counting, and fair benefit sharing will be critical to making it work, but are also completely feasible. Doing sustained, large-scale deforestation reduction would also allow Brazil to call for more ambitious goals for other big emitter countries, and create cost-effective opportunities to make that happen. A revamped CDM could then channel funds to the least developed countries that most need them.

Figure 1. Brazil annual Amazon deforestation, soy and cattle production 1996 – 2016 (source: Stabile, M. 2017. Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM); Brazil National Space Research Institute – INPE/PRODES; Brazilian Geographical and Statistical Institute – IBGE PPM and PAM, Amazon Fund.

Operation Car Wash and Chico Mendes

So why wouldn’t any country with a lot of forest to protect, and potentially a lot to gain from it, want to continue a winning streak? Well, as Brazil’s experience shows, there’s a lot less opportunity for corruption in reducing deforestation than there is in, say, building dams. Carbon credit for Amazon dams fits right in with the massive corruption, “Operation Car Wash”, super-sketchy side of Brazil. World-leading emissions reductions from controlling Amazon deforestation are an example what we could call the Chico Mendes side of the country. Brazil has always had these two sides. Corruption is endemic but so is innovative public policy. Brazil’s world-class AIDs program, which has kept infection rates far below other early hotspots; the sugar cane ethanol program that gave Brazil the biggest flex-fuel automotive fleet in the world; internationally recognized high-tech remote sensing monitoring of deforestation; and former President Lula’s poverty reduction programs are all examples.

Brazil has an exceptional opportunity to become an economic/environmental innovator and global leader of truly transformative impact – a 21st century environmental/economic superpower — if it succeeds in creating real economic value for living forests. What Acre Governor Tião Viana calls “the low-carbon, high social equity economy” shows the way to zero deforestation, sustainable commodity and family farmer agriculture, and sustainable, prosperous forest communities.

Which side of Brazil’s Jekyll-Hyde political character will win? When Chico Mendes was alive, most people would have probably picked the Car Wash side. Along with ever-increasing numbers of Brazilians, I’d pick Chico’s side.

Both sides are on display at the international climate negotiations, where Brazilian negotiators are pushing hard for deeply flawed CDM projects including Eletrobrás’s Amazon dam boondoggles. Which side wins won’t only affect Brazilians. It will make a real difference to the atmosphere, and to us.

Brazil’s climate policy theater: Brazil climate negotiators fight for carbon credit payout for scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás and Amazon mega-hydroelectrics, block carbon finance for ending Amazon deforestation.      Behind the headline-grabbing news about Brazilian political corruption, Brazilian climate change negotiators are busy pushing proposals that could seriously damage important new climate change agreements – […]

Brazil’s climate policy theater: Brazil climate negotiators fight for carbon credit payout for scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás and Amazon mega-hydroelectrics, block carbon finance for ending Amazon deforestation.      Behind the headline-grabbing news about Brazilian political corruption, Brazilian climate change negotiators are busy pushing proposals that could seriously damage important new climate change agreements – […]

Brazil’s climate policy theater: Brazil climate negotiators fight for carbon credit payout for scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás and Amazon mega-hydroelectrics, block carbon finance for ending Amazon deforestation.      Behind the headline-grabbing news about Brazilian political corruption, Brazilian climate change negotiators are busy pushing proposals that could seriously damage important new climate change agreements – […]

By Steve Schwartzman

Belo Monte Dam under construction on the Xingu River in the state of Pará, Brazil in 2013 | Photo credit: Letícia Leite-ISA

Brazil’s climate policy theater: Brazil climate negotiators fight for carbon credit payout for scandal-plagued national power company Eletrobrás and Amazon mega-hydroelectrics, block carbon finance for ending Amazon deforestation.     

Behind the headline-grabbing news about Brazilian political corruption, Brazilian climate change negotiators are busy pushing proposals that could seriously damage important new climate change agreements – and shut the door on much-needed finance for stopping deforestation.

New market mechanisms in the UN Paris Agreement and in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for Civil Aviation (CORSIA) could provide money Brazil needs to protect its rainforest, including protecting heavily threatened indigenous territories twice the size of California. The new mechanisms could also help other tropical countries stop deforestation. That would be great news for the global atmosphere and for the people who live in the forests.

But Brazil’s negotiators are dead set against it. Instead, they’re fighting hard to preserve the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a relic of the Kyoto Protocol. Global climate change champions California and the European Union have largely or entirely shut the CDM out of their markets because they’ve concluded, rightfully, that its claims to environmental integrity have lost credibility.

Brazilian negotiators say the CDM is the gold standard for environmental quality, and reducing deforestation is too risky for carbon credit. A new report by EDF and Brazilian partners – along with a plethora of other analyses — reaches a different conclusion.

Bogus Carbon Credit for Amazon dams

The CDM was created in 1997 by the Kyoto Protocol to allow emissions reductions projects in developing countries to generate tradeable carbon credits, called “Certified Emissions Reductions” (CERs), which, the Protocol specifies, could be used by industrialized countries to help meet their emissions targetsduring the years 2008-2012. But since new targets for these countries didn’t take effect under the Kyoto Protocol, CER prices plummeted for lack of buyers. Brazil has a big portfolio of projects that are generating currently zero-value CERs that could turn into real money if the new market mechanisms of the Paris Agreement and CORSIA accept CDM credits. No wonder they like the CDM.

Three Amazon dams – Santo Antônio, Jirau and Teles Pires – are Brazil’s biggest CDM projects, and say a lot about what’s wrong with the mechanism.

Starting in 2012 affiliates of Brazil’s state power company, Eletrobrás, registered the mega-hydroelectric dams in the Amazon as CDM projects. They said that the dams would reduce greenhouse gas emissions that would have otherwise happened, and that since they were big, risky projects, they wouldn’t be financially viable unless they got the carbon credit. The CDM approved the dams, issued millions of CERs for them, and stands ready to issue hundreds of millions more.

Carbon Credit for Corruption?

But, a little later, these dams were implicated in the “Operation Car Wash” investigation, probably the largest corruption investigation in the world. The investigation first uncovered bid rigging, bribery and kickbacks worth billions of dollars in state oil company Petrobrás. It has now convicted scores of politicians and top executives at Brazil’s biggest companies. Eletrobrás executives engaged in exactly the same schemes in the three Amazon dams and other projects, according to whistleblowers. One former officer of an Eletrobrás subsidiary has been sentenced to more than forty years in prison for bribery, money laundering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and participation in a criminal organization, and similar charges are pending against others.

Eletrobrás’s stock price crashed as a result. US investors brought suit against the company, now pending in federal court in New York. They allege that Eletrobrás publicly claimed it was keeping clean books and building legitimate energy projects, while in fact concealing massive corruption and kickbacks. The dams ran up billions in cost overruns (allegedly to pay the bribes and kickbacks) at the investors’ expense.

Meanwhile, while it told the CDM that carbon finance was crucial for the dams to go forward, the company went ahead and built the dams.

Certified Emission Reductions market price crashed after the end of 2012 | Source: eex.com

The dams are operating today with basically zero carbon finance, because the CERs became virtually worthless after the end-of-2012 the price crash. If the dams in fact caused any emissions reductions, they did it without money from the CERs – so they  would have happened anyway. But, in fact the dams never caused any emissions reductions – the decision to build them was political, not economic. Opportunities for bribes and kickbacks were by all indications a key factor. It’s not surprising Eletrobrás and affiliates never told its investors that it needed carbon credit for the dams to pay off – the credits were just icing on the cake.

In 2016, KLP, one of the world’s largest investment funds, managing over $36 billion in pension funds in Norway, decided to exclude investments in Eletrobrás, citing “unacceptable risk of gross corruption. According to the company's financial reports to US authorities, Eletrobrás contracts with suppliers have been overbilled during a period of almost seven years, with the excess funds paid out to Brazilian politicians, political parties and company executives.”

That the CDM approved the dam projects at all is a serious indictment of its rules. Lots of other analyses have concluded that this mechanism needs serious overhaul or phase-out. See my next post for a better approach to international collaboration on climate change mitigation.

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NutrientStar helps farmers determine which nutrient management tools and products are worth the investment.

NutrientStar helps farmers determine which nutrient management tools and products are worth the investment.

By Dick Munson

It’s understandable that FirstEnergy’s hometown newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, supports its own utility monopoly. Yet justifying that support and advocating for FirstEnergy’s proposed nuclear bailout on environmental grounds is a surprise…and misdirected.

FirstEnergy’s proposal merely is yet another attempt to force customers to prop up its uneconomic power plants. Blanket subsidies for nuclear without any additional considerations will only delay the transition to a cleaner energy future, and we can’t afford to delay.

Background

FirstEnergy made numerous bad business decisions when it doubled down on coal-fired and nuclear power plants around the same time the cost of Ohio-based natural gas was falling. Since those old and uneconomic units can no longer compete in regional electricity markets, the utility has sought subsidies from Ohio legislators and regulators, as well as the federal government. Rather than trim its executive bonuses or shareholder dividends, FirstEnergy wants help from taxpayers or its customers.

Despite federal regulators blocking FirstEnergy’s original bailout attempt, the whack-a-mole utility keeps coming back with new ways to secure handouts. Its latest plea to the Ohio legislature features a $4-billion bailout for two uneconomic nuclear reactors. And although the utility has been fined repeatedly for environmental infractions, it suddenly has discovered an interest in fighting carbon pollution.

Ohio needs a clean energy future, not a no-strings-attached bailout
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Lacking compromise

It’s certainly great to see FirstEnergy and the Akron Beacon Journal recognize the urgency of climate change and the importance of low-carbon energy to help us avoid the worst effects. Yet, that does not mean FirstEnergy’s nuclear proposal is the answer.

FirstEnergy has stubbornly refused to consider compromising or incorporating forward-looking elements like energy efficiency programs and solar job training into its nuclear proposal.

FirstEnergy points to zero-emission credits that Illinois legislators approved last year. Those credits, however, were part of a clean energy economic development package of monumental size, which is set to double the state’s energy efficiency portfolio and provide hundreds of millions for solar job training programs.

FirstEnergy has stubbornly refused to consider compromising or incorporating forward-looking elements like energy efficiency programs and solar job training into its nuclear proposal – instead insisting on a bailout that Ohioans must pay for years to come.

Clean energy promise

Ohio would be wise to prioritize other low- or no-carbon energy sources, rather than subsidize old nuclear plants. A 2016 report by Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy showed that ramping up clean energy resources in Ohio would significantly enhance the economy, potentially leading to over 100,000 new jobs and over $5 billion in net benefits.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office concluded that climate change already is costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars every year, and costs are expected to increase. The Akron Beacon Journal is right to suggest Ohio should be taking the realities of climate change into account when making energy decisions. But there are many other pathways – like advancing markets for energy efficiency and low-carbon renewable power – to take action. Ohio should pick a clean energy future, rather than granting FirstEnergy a no-strings-attached nuclear bailout that will raise electricity bills.

It’s understandable that FirstEnergy’s hometown newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, supports its own utility monopoly. Yet justifying that support and advocating for FirstEnergy’s proposed nuclear bailout on environmental grounds is a surprise…and misdirected. FirstEnergy’s proposal merely is yet another attempt to force customers to prop up its uneconomic power plants. Blanket subsidies for nuclear without […]

It’s understandable that FirstEnergy’s hometown newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, supports its own utility monopoly. Yet justifying that support and advocating for FirstEnergy’s proposed nuclear bailout on environmental grounds is a surprise…and misdirected. FirstEnergy’s proposal merely is yet another attempt to force customers to prop up its uneconomic power plants. Blanket subsidies for nuclear without […]

It’s understandable that FirstEnergy’s hometown newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, supports its own utility monopoly. Yet justifying that support and advocating for FirstEnergy’s proposed nuclear bailout on environmental grounds is a surprise…and misdirected. FirstEnergy’s proposal merely is yet another attempt to force customers to prop up its uneconomic power plants. Blanket subsidies for nuclear without […]

FirstEnergy Facts newsletter, November 1, 2017 - mailchi.mp/f24ffb6f71e8/f…