'Norway wants to be a strategic partner for Brazil in the energy transition' - diplomat

Norway wants to be a strategic partner for Brazil in the energy transition, the country's consul general in Rio de Janeiro, Mette Tangen, told BNamericas.

The country is among the main donors to the Amazon Fund, one of several initiatives being implemented by the Brazilian government together with international actors to combat climate change. 

One of the markets the Scandinavians want to help develop is carbon capture and storage (CCS). 

“We have almost 30 years of experience on the Norwegian continental shelf and we have a lot to contribute to this development in Brazil,” Tangen said. 

Today in Brazil, companies such as Petrobras, in Rio de Janeiro, and FS Agrisolutions, in Mato Grosso state, are studying CCS projects, but the country still lacks a regulatory framework for this activity.

Tangen underscored that Brazil and Norway have great similarities in the energy sector, being important producers of oil and gas, at the same time as having electricity grids that are almost 100% renewable.

Despite the intermittency of wind and solar sources and the space occupied on land by these installations, she believes it is essential to continue building renewable generation parks. 

“If we don't, climate change will continue,” said Tangen. 

With a significantly smaller territory than Brazil, the Norwegians are also targeting offshore wind generation, having launched the first auction to build a commercial wind farm in the first quarter of this year.

In Brazil, this segment still depends on the enactment of a regulatory framework, which is under discussion in congress. 

Thomas Conradi Granli, director of the Norwegian government's business development agency, Innovation Norway, said Norwegian companies operating in Brazil in areas such as oil and gas and mining can invest in value chains to become greener. 

“Norwegian companies that sell their products to the European community need to work on the energy transition, and that includes Brazil,” he told BNamericas.

Examples of Norwegian groups operating in the country include Equinor, Norsk Hydro, Statkraft and Scatec. 

Granli said that export promotion bank Eksfin has been financing energy projects in Brazil for many years, facilitating the purchase of goods and services from the European nation. 

“In the past, this was used a lot in the offshore sector by Petrobras. Now, Eksfin is much more focused on renewables,” said Granli, noting that DNB, also from Norway, supports shipbuilding in the country. 

Tangen and Granli were taking part in the Brazil and Norway Business Summit – Connecting for a Greener Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday.

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION

On the same day, the Brazilian government announced, together with development bank BNDES, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Glasgow Finance Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Brazil's climate and ecological transformation investment platform (BIP).

The platform will work with existing public funds and programs, such as Restaura Amazônia (Amazônia restoration), as well as with partner initiatives, including Brazil's nature investment lab and the industrial transition accelerator (ITA) program.

BIP will also seek partnerships with multilateral development banks and environmental and climate funds to finance emerging technologies and develop innovative financing structures.

The focus is on three key sectors: nature-based solutions and the bioeconomy, industry and mobility and energy. 

The platform has already identified and included pilot projects as a means of testing BIP's pipeline selection criteria, operating model and decision-making forums. These ventures total US$10.8bn in capital to be mobilized once the final investment decision has been made and include:

- Acelen Renewables, which is developing a US$3bn renewable fuels proposal, aims to produce 1Bl/y of green diesel and sustainable aviation fuel from Macaúba, a Brazilian plant;

- The Corridors for Life project, led by Ambipar Environment and IPÊ, is seeking US$95mn to restore one of Brazil's largest ecological corridors in the Atlantic forest, with the aim of reconnecting fragmented areas;

- Atlas Agro's US$1.15bn project will be the first industrial-scale green fertilizer plant in Brazil;

- Biomas will invest US$150mn in restoring 14,000 hectares of vegetation in the Amazon and the Atlantic forest;

- Fortescue, which is creating a US$3.5bn green hydrogen plant;

- Meteoric Resources' Caldeira project aims to raise US$425mn to finance the development of low-emission extraction methods for rare earth elements;

- Vale, which has a project to induce partner investment of approximately US$2.5bn in the construction of industrial hubs in Brazil for the production of green hydrogen and hot briquetted iron (HBI) with a view to decarbonizing the steel industry.