Leading up to COP30 in Brazil, the Crux Alliance is highlighting our members’ work to promote a thriving and equitable 100 percent clean energy economy in Brazil. This blog features an interview with Roberto Lamberts, a Professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and a member of the Global Buildings Performance Network’s Changemaker network.
Brazil’s climate story has rightly centered on stopping deforestation. Yet as prosperity and expectations rise, the quiet driver of future energy demand will be the places where Brazilians live, learn, and work. Today, buildings account for a relatively modest share of national emissions, helped by a mild climate and a historically clean, hydro-heavy grid. Brazil’s buildings are not a headline climate problem today—but they will be tomorrow.
As inequality narrows and services expand, residential and commercial energy use will climb—especially cooling. Treating buildings as peripheral now would lock in higher costs, higher demand, and avoidable carbon for decades, says Professor Roberto Lamberts, GBPN expert and Professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil.
“The perception is that buildings are not an urgent problem because the grid is clean. We have a lot of hydropower, and now we are also seeing increased use of renewables, especially solar and wind power. But we need to remember that we are a developing country. Demand growth is coming, and once it comes, it will be too late to retrofit poor standards.”
A regulatory window that Brazil cannot miss
Brazil already has the bones of a credible framework. After the 2001 energy crisis, the country created a legal basis for minimum energy performance standards and a national labeling architecture that eventually covered both appliances and buildings. Labels for buildings began in 2010 and have since shifted to a primary-energy methodology—a technical upgrade that better captures total energy use. The catch: uptake is low because building labels remain voluntary.
That is changing, says Prof. Lamberts.
“On 30th Sept, the government published minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings. The regulation creates a pathway that starts by tightening requirements for all public buildings—federal, state, and municipal—and then raises ambition over time.”
Prof. Lamberts highlights why this sequencing matters. “If the public sector sets the standard, it creates both demand and demonstration. Ministries and municipalities become proof that high performance is possible, and the private sector follows.”
“With the private sector, it gets a bit tricky because of the economic situation. The construction industry is a bit reluctant to adopt near-zero (NZ) measures because of the cost factor. Although we have minimum thermal standards that I helped to develop, nobody checks this.”
“The bigger and formal construction companies take minimum thermal standards seriously, because they need to declare it, and they can be sued if they don’t follow regulations. But the small builders and individual builders don’t fall under regulations and this is a problem we need to solve. But this is on the agenda and hopefully we will start to see improvements soon.”
Fixing the performance gap for existing buildings: from “asset intent” to “in-use reality”
There is not much focus on retrofitting existing buildings for the residential sector, but the commercial and public sector buildings do get retrofitted for energy efficiency. Brazil’s current building label is an asset rating—useful at design stage, but blind to how occupants actually run the building. Experience already shows glossy “green” assets performing poorly once in operation.
“I’m a counselor with the Brazilian Council for Sustainable Buildings, and in the course of our research we see these big certified buildings, having much more energy consumption than when they did the simulations.”
“We must bridge the gap between what a building promises and how it actually performs. That means pairing design-stage labels with an operational benchmarking regime. Otherwise, we will continue to have buildings that look efficient on paper but waste energy in practice.”
Brazil is piloting precisely this: a simplified benchmarking system with free tools for self-assessment and an audited recognition tier for those seeking formal recognition.
Incentives can be the propeller for green jobs and economic growth
There have always been some incentives. For example, during the World Cup 2014, the National Bank of Development provided a reduced rate of interest for hotels that were being built with an ‘A’ level of energy efficiency.
“At the moment we are running an effort to develop the sustainability taxonomy. It is an international effort, really, with the World Bank and others working on it. We are in discussions with the industry sector to develop and agree on the incentive rates for more efficient buildings.”
“Once that is in place, people will need to be trained, labs will need to be set up for testing and compliance to ensure that the incentives program takes off.”
This is important for Brazil, because a lot of construction, especially housing, is self-built, with very low-tech. So the incentives program, along with the increasing adoption of PV systems (photovoltaic), like solar rooftops, can create jobs and economic growth for Brazil.
Can co-benefits bring more attention to the building sector?
From a health perspective, Brazil’s temperate south finds dampness is more of a problem than heat.
“In the south of Brazil, the problem is not heat, it is mold. Poorly ventilated, uninsulated homes lead to respiratory illness. So health can be a powerful advocate for healthy and Net Zero buildings.”
“When it comes to affordability, the problem is more complex. The favelas are built from salvaged materials and can cause health issues. Sometimes, the lights are left on the whole time because the people cannot afford light switches. The education levels are also quite low. So it’s a complex mesh of affordability, health, and education that needs complex solutions. Housing can be a starting point.”
Regulations and embedded emissions
Regulation is the most important policy lever at the moment, says Prof. Lamberts.
“We must implement the system of asking the industry to recognize the efficiency level of the buildings that are put into the market. Construction companies wouldn’t like a ‘C’ on their buildings. So regulation can change everything, and it allows complementary systems like financial incentives.”
Next is embedded emissions. Brazil uses a lot of cement and steel in construction, and cement and steel production emits a lot of CO2.
“When you start making clear how much CO2 is being emitted in the building construction, then you start raising the importance of retrofitting old buildings and keeping them standing. Because if you demolish them, you waste a lot of CO2 that was embodied.
Labeling as a driver for appliance efficiency
Buildings are also about the people who live in them. And appliances play a huge role in emissions.
Prof. Lamberts explains that efficiency labelling systems can help drive better performance—as has been the case with cooling systems in Brazil.
“Roughly 80 percent of cooling systems in the market are split systems. The labeling was based on COP (Coefficient of Performance) at the maximum temperature. This metric would not show the value of the inverter technology. We changed it to follow CSPF (Cooling Seasonal Performance Factor), and it transformed the market. The ‘A’ level with the old system was 3.4; with CSPF it is 5.5. Next year it will be 7.”
“There was some resistance from industry, but we managed to find consensus and adopt the new efficiency labeling system. I am very happy that the government implemented this. This is climate policy in action.”
Another example is refrigerators. “When I did a compilation of the refrigerators’ efficiency, 97 percent were ‘A’ standards! The standards were tied to incentives. But now this has changed. We have A+, A++, A+++ until the new arrangement comes to the market and we will be back to A, B, C, D. With this change, we valued the inverter technology that brings higher efficiency to the refrigerators.”
Brazil has a unique opportunity
Brazil does not need to choose between forests and buildings. It needs to recognize that better buildings are a forest policy: by shaving peak demand, reducing system losses, and avoiding wasteful rebuild cycles, they lower pressure on the grid, on households, and—ultimately—on the land.
“Brazil has a unique chance,” says Prof. Lamberts. “We can avoid locking in inefficient buildings and show that development, equity, and climate action go together.”
“The world will be watching at COP30.”
Prof.Lamberts is a member of GBPN’s Changemaker network and a leading energy efficiency expert. He has delivered around 300 publications, including several books on building performance and energy efficiency. He is leading several research projects and is the associate editor of Energy and Buildings journal. He was a board member of several institutes. Sustainable Construction, Building Materials, and Operations Management are also among his key areas of expertise. He is also involved in the development of the Brazilian Building Energy Labeling (asset labeling), in the non-residential buildings energy benchmarking (operational labeling), and more recently in the building embodied energy and carbon.