Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) is expected to publish three guides this week with recommendations for analyzing El Niño risks in environmental licensing processes for hydroelectric plants, ports and transmission lines.
The phenomenon is characterized by above-average warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Folha had access to the documents, which provide guidance for adapting projects to droughts and extreme rains expected from the end of the year.
The impacts on the electrical and infrastructure sector are known: lower energy generation in hydroelectric plants, damage to transmission lines and disruptions to cargo transportation in ports. Even so, Brazilian legislation does not require that licensing involve measures to reduce risks.
Entrepreneurs will not be forced to follow the guides' suggestions, but the tendency is for Ibama to increase the charge for climate actions in environmental licenses.
There are recommendations common to the three types of projects: reinforcement of structures, inventory of climate threats, considering rains, fires, heat waves, windstorms and landslides, and assessment of the installation site according to projections (10, 30 and 50 years) of the United Nations scientific panel.
"We are moving from licensing photography to licensing film", compares Leonardo Teixeira, environmental analyst at Ibama. "We no longer evaluate the environmental viability of a project considering only 30 years of meteorological history. We used to license by looking in the rear view mirror."
According to the agency, the guides aim to increase the resilience of buildings in the face of extreme events, in addition to reducing the risk for populations and surrounding ecosystems. As licensing allows changing projects before construction begins, the logic is to avoid losses.
"Our expectation is that the guidelines will be influential not only for the sectors, but also for the other levels at which licensing takes place, in states and municipalities", says Cristiano Vilardo, also an environmental analyst at Ibama.
The body plans to publish other documents next year, with guidance for highways, railways and the mining sector.
As Folha showed, Ibama is preparing a rule that will require the adoption of specific measures to minimize climate damage in licensing.
Vilardo says that the process should advance in the coming months, but does not indicate an exact date. Around 15 enterprises have already adopted the new rules as a pilot for future implementation, he states.
The new environmental licensing law, which turned into a crisis between the Lula government (PT) and the National Congress last year, did not deal with climate.
"A project designed only for present conditions may become environmentally intolerable, operationally unviable, economically unsustainable or socially dangerous long before the end of its useful life", states the draft of one of the guides obtained by the report.
El Niño is expected to reach a very strong level in the coming months, according to the World Meteorological Organization, with a chance of becoming the most intense in recent history. A warming planet tends to make the impacts of the phenomenon more catastrophic.
"The severity of El Niño 2026-2027 is not an abstract threat to the future; it already dictates the rules of the operational present", says one of the guides.
Measures for transmission lines involve installing lightning rods, protecting substations and inspections before the most critical season. The diagnosis is that the biggest risks of El Niño are the expansion of cables during heat waves (which reduces efficiency), the collapse of structures during storms and the difficulty in transporting transformers across rivers due to droughts.
In the case of ports, suggestions include a drainage system with a return period greater than or equal to one hundred years, anti-corrosion coatings and monitoring systems. The climate phenomenon can increase the presence of sediments in estuaries in the South, in addition to causing stronger waves due to extratropical cyclones.
