Neutralidade carbono: um estudo de caso em uma empresa de médio porte no nordeste brasileiro

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges in the 21st century is the fight against climate change, caused by exploitation of fossil fuels by the human activities, intensifying physicalchemical processes such as the greenhouse effect, which endangers the terrestrial system as we know it. From this issue, international organizations have gathered efforts and instruments that allow the countries to develop strategies to combat it in the source, that being, reducing their emissions of Greenhouse gases, one of them being the neutralization of theses emissions. However, for these countries to achieve their emissions targets, it is necessary the participation of the productive sector, private and public, as well as regulatory and methodological guidelines, elaborated by each country, that present the benefits and the importance of GHG reduction in its production chain. That way, this article seeks, in a first moment, to survey all the legal and methodological instruments that can guide the sectors of activity to reduce their emissions. A survey of emissions from a medium-sized company in the manufacturing sector is also carried out, using the most well-known and currently established methodology, called the GHG Protocol. As a result, it was found that the main source of emissions was Scope 3’s due to the transport of the final product by container ships, responsible for 99% of total emissions, but whose mitigation cannot be carried out by the company since it is an indirect emission. The remaining 1% is divided into 71% from boiler and vehicle emissions, due to the use of fuels such as diesel and wood, and 29% from the use of electrical energy required by machinery for the other stages of manufacturing. Finally, the neutralization strategies proposed for direct emissions were the change in the source of energy consumption, the use of briquettes and the purchase of carbon credits.