By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil is advancing plans to regulate Certificates of Guarantee of Origin for Biometane (CGOB), a mechanism designed to give scale and credibility to the country’s emerging green gas market. The proposal was debated this week during a public hearing held by the Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis (ANP), Brazil’s federal energy regulator responsible for overseeing the oil, natural gas and biofuels industries.
The CGOB sits at the core of the National Program for the Decarbonization of Natural Gas Producers and Importers and for the Promotion of Biometane, created by law in 2024 and regulated by decree last year. The framework links mandatory emissions-reduction targets for natural gas producers and importers to a voluntary certification system that verifies the origin and environmental attributes of biometane, a renewable gas produced from agricultural, industrial and urban waste.
According to the draft resolution, the regulator would establish technical criteria for certifying biometane production units — including foreign producers — accredit Origin Certification Agents, define rules for generating issuance backing and regulate the primary issuance of CGOBs. The proposal also requires centralized digital systems for registrars and bookkeepers to track transactions and avoid double counting, while introducing penalties for producers, importers and certifiers that fail to comply with the rules.
“The CGOB is a critical pillar for the success of the program,” said ANP director Pietro Mendes during the hearing. He argued that the certificate has a dual function: ensuring compliance with decarbonization targets and carrying environmental attributes that could enable future transactions not only in carbon credits, but also in internationally recognised certificates of origin tied to Brazilian biometane.
The regulatory architecture is designed to align with existing certification structures under RenovaBio, Brazil’s biofuels policy, allowing the same inspection firms to act across both regimes. The aim is to reduce costs, shorten accreditation timelines and speed up the operational launch of the biometane certification system. The public consultation drew 150 submissions from 13 market participants, which will now be assessed by the agency’s technical staff before legal review and final approval by its board.
In the broader policy framework, annual emissions-reduction targets for the gas market will be defined by the Conselho Nacional de Política Energética, a government body chaired by the president that sets strategic guidelines for Brazil’s energy policy. Those targets will then be allocated to regulated agents under ANP supervision.
If implemented as planned, the CGOB could become the institutional backbone of Brazil’s biometane market, transforming waste-based renewable gas into a certified energy commodity with traceable climate value and positioning Brazil to align its green gas standards with international markets.