BNDES and Financing Brazil’s Climate Transition
By Andressa Lima (CFC-GS/UFPA) This blog presents the main findings of Working Paper No. 14 of the Climate Finance Center for the Global South (CFC-GS), “The BNDES in Financing Brazil’s Climate Transition: Trajectory, Structure, and Distribution of Resources,” written by Wallace Marcelino Pereira and Ana Clara dos Santos Cabral. The study analyzes the role of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) in financing Brazil’s climate transition. In addition to the volume of resources, it examines how these resources are distributed across sectors and regions, as well as the growing importance of the Climate Fund Program. The transition to a low-carbon economy requires large-scale, long-term investments that are subject to technological and regulatory uncertainties. In this context, development banks play an important role by providing long-term financing and directing resources toward strategic sectors. In Brazil, BNDES has historically participated in financing infrastructure, industry, and productive modernization. Over time, it has incorporated the environmental and climate agenda into its activities through instruments such as the Amazon Fund, the National Fund on Climate Change, and credit lines focused on energy efficiency, sanitation, forests, the bioeconomy, and emissions reduction. To examine this evolution, the study uses data from the BNDES Open Data Portal covering the period from 2002 to 2025. For the Climate Fund, the analysis covers the period from 2013 to 2025. The study considers both disbursements and contracted amounts and distinguishes “Green Financing,” which encompasses instruments directly related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy efficiency, biofuels, forests and the bioeconomy, environmental protection, and sanitation. The results identify three main movements in the recent trajectory of BNDES. The first was an expansion from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, when the Bank increased both disbursements and contracted amounts. After 2014, there was a sharp contraction associated with a reduction in funding sources, the repayment of resources to the National Treasury, and institutional changes. From 2022 onward, a new phase of recovery in financing capacity can be observed, although real volumes in 2025 remained below historical peaks. It is during this more recent period that climate finance has gained greater importance. Infrastructure accounted for the largest share of resources classified as green, followed by industry. When resources are analyzed by thematic category, sanitation emerges as the largest component over the period as a whole, while climate- and decarbonization-related activities have gained importance with the recent expansion. The territorial analysis highlights an important issue. Resources remain concentrated in states with greater productive density, particularly São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and the South region. The Southeast also predominates in green financing. Forests and the bioeconomy, by contrast, show a distribution more closely associated with the location of natural resources, with a stronger presence in the Amazon and Central-West regions. The results therefore show that different components of the ecological transition have distinct geographical patterns, while territorial concentration remains a challenge for broadening access to financing. The Climate Fund is one of the study’s main highlights. Its participation in green financing was uneven during its early years but increased significantly from 2023 onward. In 2025, it accounted for approximately 60% of BNDES green disbursements and contracted amounts. This expansion was accompanied by greater diversification: the relative shares of Resilient Urban Development, Native Forests and Water Resources, and Green Industry increased, while Energy Transition, although still the leading category, declined in relative terms. Sectoral concentration, however, remained high. Infrastructure and industry together accounted for approximately 95.5% of Climate Fund disbursements in 2025. The results indicate a recovery in BNDES’s financing capacity in recent years, accompanied by a greater role for the climate agenda in its activities. Despite this trend, the study identifies challenges related to the scale of green financing and the territorial distribution of resources. The authors also emphasize the importance of long-term financing in enabling investments associated with the climate transition. Reference PEREIRA, Wallace Marcelino; CABRAL, Ana Clara dos Santos. O BNDES no financiamento da transição climática brasileira: trajetória, estrutura e distribuição dos recursos. Working Paper, n. 14. Belém: Climate Finance Center for the Global South (CFC-GS), 2026. Available at: CFC-GS – Working Paper nº 14.
