President Lula opened COP30 with his boldest call yet for climate action and a clean-energy future. In his address, the Brazilian President declared that the world must “accelerate the energy transition” and “get rid of fossil fuels.” What drew the loudest applause from climate and energy experts in Belém, however, were his calls for COP30 to deliver tangible roadmaps to “overcome dependence on fossil fuels,” “reverse deforestation,” and secure equitable climate finance in a “fair and planned manner.”
Yet the day after, Lula’s promotion of so-called “sustainable fuels” cast a shadow of concern. A Roadmap away from oil, gas and coal will only succeed if negotiators and the Brazilian presidency resist the dangerous distractions of biofuels and other false solutions and stay focused on the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The rationale for a roadmap
The case for a global roadmap could not be clearer. The latest round of national climate targets falls dramatically short of the Paris Agreement’s ambition. If the race to decarbonisation at the pace required to limit warming to 1.5°C were a 42-kilometre marathon, by 2035 we should have already covered half the distance. Instead, current pledges take us barely two kilometres forward.
As Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) miss the mark, they must become the floor, not the ceiling, of global ambition. A roadmap – if not hijacked as a Trojan horse for false solutions like “sustainable fuels” – could help accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels, the source of nearly three quarters of global emissions. Clearly, a roadmap on its own will not solve these challenges, but it can be a critical step further.
What a roadmap could entail and what’s the process for it?
A full roadmap may not be finalized at COP30, but the mandate to begin accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels could well emerge in Belém – whether through a declaration, the UAE Dialogue, a new agenda item, or an omnibus decision.
To give such an outcome real weight, it should be formally anchored under the CMA and Paris Agreement, not left as an optional declaration. This would transform it into a stronger, coordinated Mutirão, a collective effort embedded within a broader ministerial dialogue on the transition away from fossil fuels.
Such a process should explore transition scenarios and produce global pathways aligned with International Energy Agency (IEA) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) benchmarks, providing structured guidance ahead of the next Global Stocktake, with milestones for 2035 and 2040 and links to long term strategies.
It could also involve developing country-tailored roadmaps that identify enabling conditions, barriers, cooperation mechanisms, and international support needs, consistent with national capacities and equity. Such a process should include a political segment, bringing together ministers and high-level representatives to assess progress and report to COP31 with concrete recommendations for adoption.
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Lula’s ‘Sustainable Fuels’ Mirage
On the second day of the Leaders Summit, President Lula, leader of the world’s second-largest biofuels producer, after the United States again spoke of a roadmap to ‘end dependency on fossil fuels’. But this time, he tried to slip in a twist: positioning “sustainable fuels” as a third pillar of the energy transition, alongside renewables and efficiency, and even launching a pledge to quadruple their production. It’s hard not to suspect that Brazil envisions the roadmap as a vehicle to advance its biofuels agenda.
That would be a serious mistake. Ironically, this proposal came alongside Lula’s call for a roadmap to halt deforestation. Yet, biofuels remain a leading driver of forest loss. If both roadmaps emerge from COP30, they must be interlinked to ensure one doesn’t undermine the other. Emission savings from biofuels are wildly overstated; some studies even find they emit more than the fossil fuels they replace. And let’s be honest: it’s impossible to imagine a world that quadruples “sustainable fuels” without devastating consequences for food security.
The pledge to quadruple so-called “sustainable fuels” rests on more shaky ground than one might realize: It conveniently draws from a recent IEA study “prepared in support of Brazil’s COP30 Presidency”. But this study refers to the IEA scenario of an “accelerated case”, which assumes existing policies are implemented, not that these policies align with net-zero pathways or the goals of the Paris Agreement. In fact, this pledge risks slowing down electrification across multiple sectors, contradicting what the IEA itself identifies as essential for a credible net-zero pathway.
Not another COP-out: We must rewrite the rules of the UN climate talks
If COP30 succeeds in establishing a roadmap – and it should – as part of the broader response to the global climate ambition gap, it must not be hijacked by Brazil’s biofuels agenda. Other countries should push back – or at the very least, insist on strong safeguards.
The lack of support speaks for itself: beyond Brazil, only 18 others have backed the pledge, hardly a groundswell compared to the 133 nations that endorsed the tripling renewables target at COP28. What’s more, countries such as Japan and Italy appear to be backing this pledge not to advance decarbonization, but to justify extending the life of combustion-engine vehicles and even coal plants through co-firing under the guise of biofuels.
Brazil’s biofuels push is not a breakthrough. It’s a dangerous distraction. A roadmap for a fast, fair and funded energy transition is urgently needed but it must be science-aligned, electrification-focused, and firmly aimed at phasing out fossil fuels, not replacing one problem with another.
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