A Brazilian farmer who wants to adopt some practice that reduces greenhouse gas emissions in his property may not always know or have available the necessary technologies to put his ideas in place. But these technologies do exist, and the European Union is making its efforts to show that there may be companies in the bloc capable of meeting this demand.
Through Low Carbon Business Action (LCBA), a business platform created by the European Union from the European Green Deal of 2020, the bloc wants to encourage commercial agreements between small and medium-sized European technology suppliers and Brazilian companies that want to invest in energy transition, circular economy and climate change mitigation in the country.
Some deals have already started to be made. Since the beginning of its operations in Brazil, the LCBA has already negotiated 14 agreements totaling €22 million, implying a potential reduction of more than 430,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. And, to accelerate its operations in Brazil, the LCBA will launch a public call to draw more Brazilian entrepreneurs in search of technologies for greener businesses.
For this cycle of client prospection, the platform listed priorities to foster in Brazil: biogas and biomethane, low carbon agriculture, waste management, renewable power (including bioenergy, wind and solar) and recycling.
“The European Union has tested technologies for this. The challenge was how to bring them to Brazil and other countries,” said Marcelo Perpétuo, LCBA’s country manager. The effort is also in place in other countries of the Americas, including Argentina, Chile, Canada, Colombia and Mexico. LCBA initially maps small and medium-sized European companies that have developed green technologies, creating a portfolio that currently includes more than 500 companies in Europe.
The proposal is to offer solutions from European companies that do not usually have the same means of multinationals to reach the market, but that also have disruptive technologies for energy transition or circular economy.
Mr. Perpétuo cites cases like that of a small business in Serbia that developed an enzyme that can be added to animal feed and is able to reduce methane emissions from cattle, or of a company with presence in Spain and Finland that can identify the species within an area of vegetation using microsatellites and radars.
Besides bridging the gap with clients on the other side of the Atlantic, LCBA also offers to support investors in their investment and business projects. This support can be technical, organizational, or even financial. Thus, if the inputs need financing, the team of the European initiative helps to structure the investment plan and offers the financial firms an environmental analysis of the proposal.
“Today there is a lot of capital set aside for ESG, but there are few robust projects for this capital to be delivered. When we enter the process, it makes things easier,” Mr. Perpétuo said. All the support is funded by the EU.
The fact that LCBA also proposes to work with companies from different segments paves the way for technologies that are usually directed to some fields that can be explored in different businesses, in a kind of “cross-pollination” of technologies, the executive said.
He guarantees, however, that the Brazilian companies interested in the initiative need to ensure that the investments they intend to make are in fact transformative of the business, to avoid the risk of greenwashing. To this end, the projects are evaluated based on environmental indicators and by an independent auditor.
Source: Valor International