Brazil at the Forefront: What Does It Take To Be Net-Zero by 2040

Brazil's current Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) establishes a target of net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Here, we use the Brazilian Land Use and Energy Systems model (BLUES) to investigate whether national GHG neutrality could be advanced to 2040. We compare a reference pathway reaching net zero in 2050 with two stylised accelerated pathways: AFOLU-2040, which prioritises mitigation in agriculture, forestry and other land use, and Energy-2040, which emphasises energy-system transformation. All pathways incorporate the same economy-wide upper-bound constraints associated with Brazil's 2030 and 2035 NDC commitments. However, because the accelerated pathways combine an earlier neutrality constraint with sector-specific assumptions, their comparison with Net-Zero 2050 does not isolate the effect of changing the net-zero year alone. Both accelerated pathways reach net zero in 2040, but their near-term trajectories diverge. By 2035, net GHG emissions decline to 850 MtCO₂e.yr^-1 in Net-Zero 2050, 655 MtCO₂e.yr^-1 in Energy-2040 and 627 MtCO₂e.yr^-1 in AFOLU-2040. AFOLU-2040 relies on rapid deforestation control, ecosystem restoration and changes in agricultural production systems, whereas Energy-2040 entails earlier transport electrification, renewable-electricity expansion, advanced biofuels and carbon capture and storage. Relative to Net-Zero 2050, cumulative territorial GHG emissions are 1.17 GtCO₂e lower in Energy-2040 and 1.45 GtCO₂e lower in AFOLU-2040 over the modelled period. Regional results further show that land-use change, electricity expansion and biofuel production are distributed unevenly across Brazil's macro-regions. Advancing neutrality is therefore technically feasible under the model assumptions, but implementation would require substantially different near-term policies, infrastructure and governance capacities, along with regionally differentiated planning and coordination across levels of government.