The new Brazilian carbon credit, called CBIOs, had their first trade of 100 units at a cost of Real 50/CBIO ($10/CBIO) on June 12, in which the Datagro Conference company was the buyer and an ethanol producer Adecoagro was the seller.
The deal was mediated by Sucden, a sugar and ethanol trading company.
The CBIOs will be used to neutralize carbon emissions during Datagro events in 2020, according to company director Luiz Felipe Nastari. "We are happy to buy a modern tool like CBIOs to offset the carbon emissions from our events, as it will increase the energetic efficiency, not just cleaning the planet, but also lowering the fuel cost for consumers," Nastari said.
The government's RenovaBio program – aimed at cutting carbon emission in the country – was officially implemented on December 24, 2019, and the official trading of CBIOs in the Brazilian stock exchange, referred to as B3, started on April 27.
While the CBIO value in the first trade was within market estimates, sources were not expecting a trade to happen before the Ministry of Mines and Energy announces the official carbon-reduction requirements for the current year.
Recent changes in the program
Brazil′s Minister of Mines and Energy released on June 5 the proposal to reduce RenovaBio's mandatory goals. The public consultation period will be open to receive commentaries for 30 days until July 4.
The revision comes in response to the abrupt loss of domestic fuel demand in 2020 amid the spread of coronavirus in the country and the severe economic impact associated with it.
The proposal would reduce the mandatory credit to 14.53 million decarbonization credits, down 49.4% from the original target established at 28.7 million credits.
Fuel distributors are the obligated parties within the Brazilian program. A total of 134 distributors are listed by the National Petroleum Agency as obligated parties to purchase CBIOs. Petrobras has been allocated the biggest target, at 27.1% of total market share.
Until June 4, a total of 731,952 CBIOs were made available to be traded in the B3 platform. This corresponds to 5% of the new proposed target.
On average, around 800 liters of ethanol are needed to generate one CBIO and 500 liters of biodiesel. RenovaBio is an additional law on top of mandatory biofuel blending, and that the purchase of CBIOs does not replace the current mandatory blending rates of 27% anhydrous ethanol in gasoline and 12% biodiesel in diesel.
The number of producers already certified and able to generate CBIOs are up to 189, according to the latest ANP data from May 29. Out this total, 169 are ethanol producers, 19 are biodiesel plants and one is a biogas producer.
