(Bloomberg) -- Brazil and the European Union are working on more ambitious emissions-cutting plans ahead of next year’s climate talks to encourage other countries to ramp up ambition, according to Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva. 

The South American country will host the 2025 UN-sponsored climate summit known as COP30 in which countries are scheduled to present their updated climate plans. 

“Brazil will make an effort and is making an effort to present its goal to reduce [emissions] way ahead of time to lead with example and encourage other countries to have ambitious targets,” Silva said in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “COP30 has a very big opportunity to make our ambitions aligned with the 1.5C target.”

Silva said Brazil is working on new targets and she was told by the EU’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra during a meeting in Davos that the bloc was doing the same.

Greenhouse gas emissions need to fall significantly this decade and through 2050 in order to keep global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5C by the end of the century. Last year was the hottest on record, with average temperatures 1.46C higher than in pre-industrial times. The warming trend will only continue, with temperatures set to rise as much as 2.8C this century if only current climate plans are implemented.

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But countries’ ability to implement their plans depends on access to finance, Silva said. Developing nations are disproportionately affected by the extreme events made worse by climate change and have higher costs of capital to fund recovery from disasters. This year’s climate summit, set to take place in Baku, Azerbaijan in November, will focus on setting a new climate finance target for years to come.

“Ambitious goals need equally ambitious means of implementation,” Silva said. “That needs to come out of COP29.”

While Brazil is looking to raise its profile as a climate leader, this image is at odds with its plan for increasing oil production.  The country joined the cooperation charter of the OPEC+ oil alliance, and state-controlled company Petrobras announced a $102 billion five-year budget for 2024-2028 that includes investment in new exploration projects and refineries, as well as renewables and clean hydrogen.

Silva suggested Brazil’s greener transition is complicated, saying the debate about climate action is happening amid a global energy crisis. “Fossil fuel producing and consuming countries need to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and at the same time accelerating renewables,” she said, citing Brazil president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s speech at COP28 last month.

A commitment along these lines signed at the summit in Dubai was based in science, Silva said. Her statement followed a speech last week by Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman, who said the language on the agreement suggests these items are “choices” and not requirements that need to be fulfilled by signatories. 

“The main cause of climate change is the use of coal, oil and gas,” she said. “That’s not a matter for interpretation.”

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