Tracing Brazilian states’ CO2 emissions in domestic and global trade

The current Brazilian position on climate change has been formalized with the law of National Climate Change Policy, which provides a legal framework for national actions aimed at mitigation and adaptation. Within PNMC, the country has defined its national voluntary reduction targets for greenhouse gases emissions, with reductions between 36.1% and 38.9% of projected emissions by 2020. The distribution of the corresponding mitigation efforts by regions is of great concern in a large country like Brazil. In fact, most of Brazilian states have established public policies on climate change. In this context, questions raised in the literature on global climate change, such as the environmental responsibility for emissions embodied in trade, also apply at the regional level, and perhaps even to a larger extent. In order to analyze at regional level the current relationship between Brazil’s CO2 emissions and domestic and global value chains, in this study we adopt a new framework that combines a world input-output table with an inter-regional input-output table. Also, a new database is compiled on Brazilian states’ energy use (by fuel) and related CO2 emissions at sectoral level, based on states’ official energy balances. We are able to evaluate the CO2 emissions in each of the 27 Brazilian states, considering their respective productive structure, energy use, as well as their trade with other states or foreign countries. We find that, in 2008, emissions from the production of inter-regionally traded goods and services corresponded to 36% of Brazilian CO2 emissions. There is great variation among states concerning their emissions intensities and carbon content of their trade relationships with their states and foreign countries.