Climate Protection and Environmental Interests in Renewable Energy Law - Perspectives from Brazil and Germany

This book is about environmental and climate legal protection in the energy transition. The Paris Agreement has a binding commitment of holding the global temperature increase to 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. To cope with the negative effects of climate changes and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, one of the primary responses has been the deployment of renewable energy sources, transiting from fossil fuels to sustainable electricity production. However, renewable energy sources can also cause significant environmental impacts. Wind energy, for instance, can impact biodiversity, such as birds and bats, killing them when colliding with turbines and affecting their migration and nesting.

This results in conflicts in environmental law.  This book questions whether, in the energy transition, the generation of electricity from renewable sources to protect the climate is compatible with the protection of the environment, both interests in environmental law.

To address this question, this book follows a legal-environmental perspective and assesses the common problem of solving those internal environmental conflicts in Brazilian and German law to understand and compare whether and how both legal systems solve the conflicts by compatibilizing the protection of the climate with other environmental interests. The legal analysis focuses on land-use planning and environmental licensing, assessing similarities and differences, and evaluating the results, identifying what one country can learn from the other.

PauIa Galbiatti Silveira works as a Subject Matter Expert at a private consultancy company, researching and developing legal guidelines for sustainability in products compliance and managing climate-related disclosure and reporting. She also works as a private consultant in Brazil for specific projects, such as in 2015 for the Brazilian National Agency for Land Transportation and the Transport and Logistics Laboratory in the analysis of environmental legislation applicable to services of rail passenger transport, and currently for the legal analysis of energy transition in isolated systems in the Brazilian Amazon, funded by GIZ.

This practical experience follows her academic experience. She holds a Doctorate in Law from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil) and the University of Bremen (Germany). Since she started researching climate-related laws in policies in the Jus-Clima research group in 2010, she has accumulated more than 10 years of academic and practical experience in legal analysis, focusing on environmental and climate-related matters. Paula is a member of the knowledge network United Nations Harmony with Nature and of the IUCN Commission for Environmental Law. She also participates in the research groups Jus-Clima (UFMT/Brazil) and GPDA (UFSC/Brazil). Finally, she works as a volunteer for Instituto Verdeluz (Fortaleza/Brazil) in legal analysis for specific projects to improve environmental conditions in the region.