Brazil’s SBCE Implementation Phases: What Is Law, What Is Draft and What Is Only a Target

Anyone searching for the SBCE calendar runs into three sets of dates that look alike but carry very different weight. The first comes from Lei 15.042, of 11 December 2024, which created the Sistema Brasileiro de Comércio de Emissões (SBCE) and describes its rollout in five phases without naming a single year. The second comes from a draft portaria the Ministry of Finance put out for public consultation in July 2026, which attaches 2027, 2029 and 2031 to the entry of economic sectors. The third comes from projections the Secretaria Extraordinária do Mercado de Carbono (SEMC) shows in its own slides. This guide separates the three so you can read any SBCE timeline and know, line by line, whether it is binding, proposed or merely planned.

What the SBCE phases are in the law

Article 50 of Lei 15.042/2024 says the SBCE will be implemented in five phases. Here is what the statute actually fixes:

• Phase I: a 12-month period, extendable by another 12 months, to issue the regulations of the law, counted from its entry into force.
• Phase II: a one-year period for operators to set up the instruments for reporting emissions.
• Phase III: a two-year period in which operators are subject only to submitting a monitoring plan and reporting emissions and removals to the managing body.
• Phase IV: the term of the first Plano Nacional de Alocação (PNA), with free distribution of Cotas Brasileiras de Emissão (CBEs) and the launch of the SBCE asset market.
• Phase V: full implementation of the SBCE, at the end of the first PNA.

Notice what is missing. The law gives durations and triggers, not calendar years. The only date you can compute from the statute itself is the end of Phase I. Article 58 puts the law in force on publication, which happened in the Diário Oficial da União on 12 December 2024. Twelve months later is 12 December 2025. With the optional extension, it is 12 December 2026. Everything after that depends on when each phase is actually opened by regulation.

How the clock works: durations chained to acts

The phases are sequential, and each one starts when the previous one closes. Phase II lasts one year and Phase III two years, so once Phase II opens the law carries operators through three years of reporting before the first allocation plan takes effect. But the statute never says when Phase II opens. That is the gap the draft and the projections try to fill.

Two other provisions matter for reading the calendar. Article 29 lists the operator duties: submit a monitoring plan, send emissions and removals reports, and send a periodic reconciliation report. Article 30 ties those duties to size. Installations and sources above 10,000 tCO2e per year are subject to the plan and reporting duties. Above 25,000 tCO2e per year, the reconciliation duty applies as well. Those thresholds are law. Which sectors, installations and gases fall inside them is left to the managing body under Article 8.

Who runs the SBCE today

Article 6 of the law sets a three-part governance: the Comitê Interministerial sobre Mudança do Clima (CIM), a managing body, and the Comitê Técnico Consultivo Permanente (CTCP). The permanent managing body does not exist yet. Decreto 12.677, of 15 October 2025, created the SEMC inside the Ministry of Finance and gave it the managing body powers on a temporary basis, until the permanent body is created and starts operating. So when a document says the managing body will decide something, in practice that currently means the SEMC.

Where 2027, 2029 and 2031 come from

Those years are not in Lei 15.042. They appear in a draft portaria of the SEMC that went to public consultation on the Brasil Participativo platform from 28 July to 28 August 2026. The draft deals only with the stages for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) duties. Its Article 3 proposes three stages:

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• Stage 1, first year in 2027: primary aluminium including alumina, integrated iron and steel mills, cement, oil and gas exploration and production, oil refining, pulp and paper, and domestic air transport.
• Stage 2, first year by 2029: secondary aluminium, semi-integrated steel mills, chemicals, mining, food and beverages, waste, sewage, ceramics, glass and the electricity sector.
• Stage 3, first year by 2031: waterway, rail and road transport.

Article 2 of the draft explains what first year means. Year one is for submitting the monitoring plan. Year two is effective monitoring. From year three on, operators monitor and also submit a verified emissions report for the previous calendar year. The draft is explicit that listing a sector by CNAE code does not by itself subject every activity in that code to MRV duties, and that the managing body will still define the regulated sources, installations and operators in a separate act. It says nothing about emission caps or allocation.

At the time of writing the draft has not been published as a final portaria. The SEMC calendar updated on 28 July 2026 listed publication in the Diário Oficial for September 2026. The ESG Minute scoreboard at esgminute.com.br/placar-sbce tracks whether that has happened and marked the item as delayed at its last check. Until the portaria is published, 2027, 2029 and 2031 are a proposal.

What the SEMC projects, and why it is only a target

The SEMC publishes an institutional presentation on its gov.br page with a slide on the phases of SBCE implementation under Article 50. It maps Phase 1 to 2025 and 2026, Phase 2 to 2027, Phase 3 to 2028 and 2029, Phase 4 to 2030 onward, and leaves Phase 5 open. This is the agency reading its own plan onto the law. It is a working assumption, not a norm. If Phase I slips because the regulations are not out by December 2026, the whole chain moves.

The CTCP presentation of 19 May 2026 adds another layer. It proposes three entry stages in four-year cycles, with a two-year gap between the start of each stage, and aligns the whole design with the Plano Clima horizon of 2024 to 2035. In that design, year four of each cycle is the Plano Nacional de Alocação. That is a planning concept from a slide deck, useful to understand intent, but not something any operator can be held to.

Step by step: how to read an SBCE date

1. Find the source. Is the date in the law, in a published decree or portaria, in a draft under consultation, or in a presentation? Only the first two bind anyone.
2. Check the act number. Lei 15.042/2024 and Decreto 12.677/2025 have numbers and DOU dates. The MRV stages draft has none yet, which is the giveaway that it is still a draft.
3. Match the vocabulary. The law speaks of phases I to V. The draft portaria speaks of stages 1 to 3 and years A1, A2 and A3. The two do not map one to one.
4. Ask which duty the date triggers. A 2027 date in the draft triggers only a monitoring plan for Stage 1 sectors. It does not trigger allocation, trading or surrender of CBEs.
5. Check the scoreboard. Status can change from draft to published without the content changing, and that is exactly the moment the legal weight of the date changes.

Common mistakes with the SBCE calendar

• Treating 2027 as the start of carbon pricing. Under both the law and the draft, 2027 at most starts monitoring plans for a first group of sectors. Caps and allocation belong to Phase IV, which needs a PNA that does not exist yet.
• Reading 2030 as a legal deadline. The 2030 figure comes from the SEMC slide, not from Article 50. The law only says Phase IV begins with the first PNA.
• Assuming every company in a listed sector is covered. The draft itself says CNAE listing is not enough. The thresholds in Article 30 and a future act defining installations still apply.
• Confusing the three stages of the draft with the five phases of the law. Stage 2 of the draft is not Phase II of Article 50.
• Stating that Phase I was extended. The law allows a 12-month extension, but the scoreboard notes that no formal extension act had been located as of its last check. Confirm before writing that Phase I ends in December 2026.

What to do now

If you operate in a Stage 1 sector of the draft, work as if a monitoring plan will be due in 2027. That is the SEMC intention, and the preparatory work is the same whether the final portaria lands in 2026 or later. Keep a short internal note that records, for each date you rely on, whether it comes from Lei 15.042, from a published act, or from a draft. Follow the SEMC calendar for the portaria on sector coverage, the portaria creating the Câmara de Assuntos Regulatórios (CAREG), and the decrees for the Programa Brasileiro de MRV and the Programa Brasileiro de Compensação de Emissões, all listed as planned for the second half of 2026. When any of them is published, update your note and move the date from the proposal column to the law column. Until then, read every SBCE calendar with Article 50 open beside it.

Sources

• Lei 15.042, de 11 de dezembro de 2024 (Planalto)
• Decreto 12.677, de 15 de outubro de 2025 (Planalto)
• Public consultation on the MRV stages of the SBCE, with the draft portaria (Brasil Participativo)
• SEMC institutional presentation with the phase projection (gov.br)
• SEMC calendar updated on 28 July 2026 (gov.br)
• CTCP meeting of 19 May 2026, preliminary sector coverage proposal (gov.br)

Read next

• Brazil SBCE tracker: every act with its primary source
• Free PDF guides on carbon markets
• Brazil SBCE timeline 2024 to 2031 (PDF)

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