By: Piyush Verma
The following opinion piece originally appeared in Exame on September 21, 2025.
Brazil is rightly seen as a clean energy champion. Nearly 90% of its electricity comes from renewables, thanks to a powerful mix of hydropower, a world-class biofuels industry, and rapidly growing wind and solar. This gives Brazil a head start in the global energy transition, a transformation that is reshaping economies worldwide. Yet beneath this strong position lies a harder truth: the next phase will be more complex. Heavy reliance on hydropower makes Brazil’s power system vulnerable to climate shocks, as severe droughts threaten supply. At the same time, fossil fuels continue to dominate transport, heavy industry, and parts of agriculture. Managing these vulnerabilities while sustaining growth will require new strategies and, crucially, new partnerships.
This is where deeper collaboration with India, South Africa, and Indonesia—what some call the IBSA+Indonesia grouping—becomes vital.
Energy transition today is not simply about meeting environmental targets. It has become a question of competitiveness, job creation, and geopolitical influence in a century defined by clean energy. By working together, Brazil and its partners can not only safeguard their own transitions but also shape the rules of the emerging global energy order.
Brazil, India, South Africa, and Indonesia share a defining dilemma. Each must accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels while keeping energy affordable and reliable for hundreds of millions of people.
Unlike wealthier economies, they cannot afford a transition that sidelines growth or puts workers at risk. But nor can they ignore the rising costs of climate change, which already fall disproportionately on the Global South.
This shared challenge makes cooperation not optional but strategic. By pooling their experiences and political weight, these countries can push for global rules, finance, and technology flows that better reflect Southern realities. Acting together, they can deliver outcomes Brazil alone would struggle to achieve.
One of the clearest areas for collaboration is finance. The single greatest bottleneck for the energy transition in emerging markets is the cost of capital.
Renewable projects in Brazil often pay two to three times higher interest rates than similar projects in Europe or the United States. India and South Africa face the same obstacle, while Indonesia struggles to attract private investment at scale.
If Brazil and its partners align their voices at the G20, COP summits, and development banks, they could press for fairer financing terms, innovative de-risking mechanisms, and reforms that lower borrowing costs across the South. Such coordination could also influence private capital, which is expected to become the dominant source of clean energy investment in the future.
The second frontier is industrial. Each of these countries is trying to harness renewable power to build competitive, future-proof industries.
Brazil is seeking to convert its green electricity into low-carbon steel, fertilizers, bio-based chemicals, and advanced biofuels.
India is scaling up green hydrogen, solar manufacturing, and electric mobility. South Africa is betting on critical minerals and hydrogen hubs, while Indonesia, with its vast nickel reserves, is anchoring the global battery supply chain.
Rather than competing in silos, collaboration could open new markets, pool resources, and reduce dependence on Northern supply chains. Joint research, harmonized standards, and technology partnerships would allow each country to capture more value at home.
For Brazil, the opportunity to combine its biofuel and hydrogen potential with India’s scale, South Africa’s mineral base, and Indonesia’s battery ecosystem is a chance to build a diversified, resilient industrial platform rooted in the Global South.
The transition is not only technical but also social. Workers and communities tied to hydropower, agriculture-based biofuels, or fossil fuel sectors in Brazil face disruption, even as clean industries promise fresh opportunities. Here again, IBSA+Indonesia partners offer useful lessons.
South Africa is pioneering funds to support coal-dependent regions. India is investing heavily in workforce training for renewable industries. Indonesia is crafting policies to link clean investment with jobs.
By sharing knowledge, these countries can design just transition blueprints that combine skills development, community investment, and social protection.
For Brazil, cooperation could help ensure that the energy transition delivers not only cleaner power but also more inclusive growth, showing that the South can chart a path where economic expansion, equity, and decarbonization move forward together.
Beyond economics, the geopolitical case is equally compelling. Together, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Indonesia represent more than 2.5 billion people and over 7 trillion US dollars in GDP.
Their combined weight gives them the ability to reset global debates on trade rules, carbon standards, climate finance, and energy governance—conversations too often dominated by Northern powers. For Brazil, leadership in this grouping would complement its role in BRICS and strengthen its hand in global negotiations.
It would also align Brazil with three other democracies that share similar development priorities and energy challenges, making their collective case harder to ignore.
The timing could not be more important. Brazil will host COP30 in next two months, placing it at the centre of global climate negotiations.
This moment is both symbolic and practical. It is an opportunity to showcase renewable achievements, but also to demonstrate leadership in forging new coalitions and addressing the harder questions of transition: how to finance it, how to build clean industries, how to support workers and regions, and how to plan for resilience in the face of climate impacts.
By working more closely with India, South Africa, and Indonesia, Brazil can move faster at home, bargain better abroad, and ensure the Global South is not just present but powerful at the table where tomorrow’s rules are written.
Brazil has always seen itself as a bridge—between North and South, East and West. By betting on IBSA+Indonesia, it can reaffirm that role, transforming its natural advantages into shared prosperity and helping design an energy future that works not just for itself but for its partners and for the world.
Piyush Verma is Senior Fellow for the Energy & Climate program at ORF America.