Executive Summary

A just and inclusive global energy transition now depends significantly upon the energy transition within BRICS countries. Since 2024, BRICS has grown significantly from its five original members Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa to now include five new members — Iran, the UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia. This expanded BRICS group accounts for more than half of global carbon emissions, forty-five percent of the world’s population, and roughly thirty-five percent of global economic GDP (as measured in PPP). Therefore, BRICS policy choices and investment flows now gives both individual member countries and the group a pivotal force on the pace and nature of the global energy transition, and whether or not the world meets the goal set at COP28 of tripling renewable energy by 2030, thereby keeping the 1.5 degree-aligned pathway alive.

“Together we account for nearly 50% of global energy production and consumption," said Thiago Barral, national secretary for energy transition and planning in Brazil, emphasizing that "this places on us a shared responsibility to pursue a balance between energy security, sustainable development and the transition towards a low-carbon future.”

Clean energy and green manufacturing for BRICS countries is no longer just about climate but has increasingly become central to national economic and security strategies. BRICS countries are planning, funding and implementing green industrial policies to achieve their shared priority of sustainable development. BRICS policymakers point to the multiple objectives of their green industrial policies: accelerate the energy transition, reduce import dependency on foreign supply chains, strengthen manufacturing, create jobs, and enhance national security. Such a BRICS repositioning of the energy transition as a strategic lever for sustainable development is a critical step in reframing climate commitments as an engine of innovation, industrialization, competitiveness and jobs.

With the entry of new petrostates— Iran and UAE — together with the founding petrostate member Russia, many analysts assess BRICS as a group that is committed to oil and gas.

“However, investment flows and green industrialization trends that we lay out in our report tell a different story of a greening BRICS that is happening at the same time as a contested energy transition within BRICS.”

Global annual investment flowing into clean energy is now twice as big as investment in fossil fuels. Clean energy transition investment is growing annually at about 25 percent, soaring to just over $2 trillion in 2024, even as fossil fuels have stagnated at around $1 trillion for the past decade. Keeping with the global energy transition, in BRICS countries too, there are twice as many new wind and utility-scale solar power projects in development than new projects fueled by coal, oil, and gas6. BRICS members — China, India and Brazil— are among three of worlds top five solar generating countries.

Oil and gas rich member countries of BRICS are facing a rising challenge to their growth models from the accelerated green industrial policy choices of the oil and gas importing countries of BRICS. Rapid growth in renewable energy above all in in China, followed by Brazil, India, and South Africa, means that a highly significant crossover has taken place: fossil fuels now account for less than half of the bloc’s total electricity generation (GEM 2025). Meanwhile, other BRICS countries — Russia and Iran — resist green industrial and energy policies and continue to be anchored on oil and gas production.

In this report, we discuss the potential for green industrial development by analyzing the natural resource base and manufacturing base of each BRICS country (details in methodological annex), together with their new wave of pro-active green industrial policies to develop that potential, and describe their major green industrial assets. We also study cases of co-development of green industries within BRICS nations as evidence of strengthening intra-bloc energy cooperation. Our analysis focuses on Brazil, India, China, South Africa, and two of the newest BRICS member states Indonesia, and UAE. We exclude Russia because of its entrenched political opposition towards developing its large green potential.

Finally, the geopolitical order is fragmenting as the energy transition creates new winners and losers.

“The foundation of the postwar geopolitical order were three pillars: American hegemony, the fossil fuel energy system, and an open multilateral trading order. The United States is now actively attacking its security arrangements, financial stability, the open trading order, and its domestic and global climate goals. Thus each pillar of that foundation has now eroded and is creating challenges — and new opportunities— for BRICS countries in achieving their shared goal of sustainable development.”

Current green investments trends fall significantly short of what is needed to meet Paris Climate targets, both in scale and in leaving the South behind. Achieving a just and inclusive global energy transition requires BRICS countries to go far beyond simply replacing fossil fuels. BRICS has an opportunity to take proactive leadership in shaping an emerging International order and safeguard multilateralism.

We recommend BRICS focus on three transformative policy agenda to make the new geopolitical order safer for their shared project of sustainable development: industrial and technological cooperation, investment and financing cooperation, and inclusive multilateralism.