The clean energy transition in Brazil’s power sector is well underway. Brazil is Latin America’s largest renewable energy market with almost 45% of its energy demand comprised of renewable resources, primarily hydropower.
Sostenibilidad
In this blog, we celebrate the value of IDB safeguards through the lens of our specialists across the region. Here is a brief glimpse of the work they do in environmental and social safeguards.
Climate change poses significant risks to development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Can you even have sustainability and hydropower in the same sentence? It’s a question that for years has challenged development practitioners (and bolstered critics) of this renewable source of energy. But the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is taking steps to help answer this question. Hydropower can be massive in scale. In 2018, electricity generation from hydropower reached an estimated 4,200-terawatt hours (TWh), setting the highest ever contribution from a renewable energy source (International Hydropower Association, 2019).
Climate change is not only an environmental challenge, but also a political, economic and social one. Projections indicate that, if the current emissions trajectory continues, the global average temperature of the planet will exceed by 3°C the average temperature observed at the beginning of the 19th century, generating an unprecedented impact on the history of humankind.