On April 6, the Rio de Janeiro State Federation of Industry (Firjan) and OceanPact held the first of three events to discuss the energy transition in the maritime ecosystem with industry specialists. The speakers were Bruna Mascotte, a partner in Catavento; Carlos Victal, the Brazilian Oil and Gas Institute’s sustainability manager; and Rafael Torres, the director of business development at SBM Offshore. The event, held at Casa Firjan, was titled “Quantification of Offshore Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” The moderators were Andrea Lopes, sustainability specialist at Firjan; and Ana Lyra, OceanPact’s sustainability manager.
Among other topics, the experts discussed efforts to identify and quantify oil and gas offshore activities’ greenhouse gas emissions. Karine Fragoso, Firjan’s oil, gas and shipping manager, welcomed the federation’s partnership with OceanPact and stressed that both organizations are concerned about the environment. “Brazil continues to be the world’s largest market for the installation of platform ships. This causes impacts, so we are very concerned about this sector’s ethics, integrity, quality and social, environmental and financial sustainability. We have to look at this from various angles to create a market that is healthy for everyone,” she said.
The speakers expressed their concerns about climate change and mentioned recent data from a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which argued that measures need to be taken urgently to limit the rise in the Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius and thereby avoid severe consequences. In view of this, the speakers emphasized the importance of information as a basis for all management decisions, including the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions during the decarbonization of the economy and energy transition.
Bruna Mascote said that almost half the world’s people are already extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This will create social problems and economic losses. “We need to reduce the percentage of energy that is generated from fossil fuels and boost generation from sources that do not emit greenhouse gases. There is pressure on companies to improve their climate governance and quantify their emissions from all sides: investors, society and regulatory bodies,” she said.
The Brazilian Oil and Gas Institute’s Carlos Victal discussed the oil and gas sector’s initiatives to fight climate change and ensure a fair and inclusive energy transition. Rafael Torres ended the debate by saying that oil will not stop being used in the next two decades and the most important thing today is to have the smallest possible carbon footprint in oil exploration and production. In his view, energy will increasingly come from the oceans. One advantage of this is that most of the world’s people live on or near the coast, he noted.
You can watch a recording of the event on OceanPact’s channel. The second event in the series, called “Solutions for Decarbonization in the Oceans,” will take place on April 19.