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Article • Rev. Bras. Polít. Int. 69 (1) • 2026 • https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329202600108 linkcopy

Open-access Techno-Economic Energy Diplomacy in Times of Global Crisis: China, India, and Russia in Brazil (2020-2023)

Abstract

The global shocks of 2020–2023 intensified competition over the terms of energy transition cooperation. This article asks how emerging powers convert energy diplomacy from declarations into bankable projects and durable industrial linkages in a major transition market. I conceptualize “energy diplomacy engagement” as a three-channel bundle: (i) technology cooperation, (ii) manufacturing localization/industrial presence, and (iii) supply-chain integration via procurement, finance, and standards. I argue that bundle configuration and durability are shaped by three supplier-side capabilities—technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic infrastructure—whose interaction determines whether channels open, deepen, or stall under crisis conditions. Empirically, I compare China, India, and Russia in Brazil across renewable electricity, biofuels, and nuclear power.

Keywords:
economic diplomacy; energy transition; geoeconomics; finance; standards; Brazil

Introduction

Decarbonization is increasingly pursued through the instruments of political economy rather than through climate commitments alone. This article asks how emerging powers translate low-carbon capabilities into influence in a major transition market when crises raise uncertainty and the costs of cross-border cooperation (Eichengreen 2024; McGuire et al. 2024). It contributes to three conversations that have been especially salient in International Relations and foreign affairs scholarship published in RBPI: (1) debates on Brazil’s economic diplomacy and strategic autonomy in a changing world economy (Puntigliano 2008; Oliveira 2010; Brun and Covarrubias 2024; Faleiro 2025); (2) debates on South–South cooperation and minilateral platforms such as BRICS as arenas for agenda-setting and credibility signaling under contestation (Duggan and Azalia 2020; van Noort 2019); and (3) debates on how external powers’ firms and instruments shape, and are filtered by, Brazil’s domestic institutions in energy and climate-related sectors (Becard and Macedo 2014; Søndergaard et al. 2022; Basso 2019; Araripe et al. 2025; Milani and Duarte 2024). Building on these debates, the article conceptualizes crisis-era energy diplomacy as economic statecraft expressed through an engagement bundle that links project conversion, industrial presence, and supply-chain governance via finance, procurement, and standards.

I conceptualize the dependent variable as an “energy diplomacy engagement”: a bundle of (i) technology cooperation/transfer, (ii) manufacturing localization or industrial presence, and (iii) supply-chain integration via finance, procurement, or standards. I argue that the configuration of this bundle is shaped by three supplier-side capacities - technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic reach - and I identify the conditions under which these channels open, deepen, or stall during crises.

Adopting a political economy lens, the article reframes energy diplomacy as a mode of economic statecraft: suppliers attempt to convert technological and industrial capabilities into durable relationships by bundling cooperation, localization, and supply-chain control. This perspective foregrounds distributional stakes - who captures rents, learning-by-doing, jobs, and standards-setting leverage across channels - under conditions of geopolitical tension and market volatility.

Empirically, the article uses a structured, focused comparison of China, India, and Russia in Brazil during the overlapping shocks of 2020-2023. The comparison leverages sectoral variation (renewables, biofuels, nuclear) to trace how different supplier capacities translate into different channel configurations within the same recipient context.

Brazil is selected as a strategic receptor: a large transition market that is receptive but selective in converting external offers into projects and long-term industrial linkages. This characterization applies specifically to Brazil’s relations with extra-regional emerging powers, particularly China, India, and Russia within the broader BRICS context. It does not imply that Brazil occupies a receptive or subordinate position in all external relationships. In this article, receptivity refers to the degree to which external proposals can be converted into projects and durable industrial linkages given domestic market size, regulatory and procurement institutions, and the structure of domestic coalitions. Receptivity is therefore not indiscriminate; it is a patterned openness that conditions in which channels are politically and commercially viable.

Previewing the main findings, the paper shows that China leverages manufacturing scale and supply-chain governance in wind and solar to build broad engagements anchored in localization and procurement. India centers its diplomacy on biofuels and institution-building, generating cooperation in technology and agenda-setting despite thinner industrial presence. Russia sustains narrower, high-sensitivity engagement in nuclear power through contracting and state-linked delivery capacity.

The paper makes three contributions to debates in International Relations on economic diplomacy and South–South cooperation. First, it conceptualizes crisis-era energy diplomacy as an engagement bundle that links diplomatic initiatives to procurement, finance, standards, and industrial presence. Second, using a structured, focused comparison of China, India, and Russia in Brazil (2020–2023), it shows how supplier-side industrial power and institutional coordination condition whether cooperation remains episodic or consolidates into durable project pipelines and industrial linkages. Third, it foregrounds credibility politics under geopolitical risk: suppliers mobilize rules, standards, and safeguards—often via multilateral fora—to lower transaction costs, signal delivery capacity, and shape the terms of cooperation (Aggarwal and Reddie 2025; Laryš 2024).

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. After outlining the research design and evidence, Section 2 develops the core framework by specifying how technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic reach condition engagement across the three channels. Section 3 situates the argument in a political-economy perspective and clarifies the structural foundations of variation among emerging powers. Section 4 examines differentiated sectoral strategies through the cases of China in renewable electricity, especially solar and wind, India in biofuels, and Russia in nuclear energy. Section 5 defines Brazil’s receptivity and the domestic conditions that enable or constrain multi-vector engagement. Section 6 draws out comparative patterns and discusses implications for the political economy of the energy transition. Section 7 concludes.

Research Design and Evidence

To make crisis-era energy diplomacy comparable across suppliers, the article uses a structured, focused comparison centered on observable engagements in Brazil (2020-2023). The unit of comparison is an “energy diplomacy engagement,” defined as a bundle of (i) technology cooperation/transfer, (ii) manufacturing localization or industrial presence, and (iii) supply-chain integration via finance, procurement, or standards. Evidence is triangulated from official policy documents and bilateral agreements, multilateral communiqués, corporate filings and press releases, and project-level information (investment announcements, contracts, and facility siting), complemented by secondary reporting. The analysis then traces how each supplier’s technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic reach shape which channels open, deepen, or stall under crisis conditions.

Strategic Configurations of Energy Diplomacy: Institutions, Capabilities, and Crisis Response

The analytical framework specifies how technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic reach shape whether energy-diplomacy engagement channels open, deepen, or stall under crisis conditions. The growing salience of energy diplomacy—intensified by overlapping disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, supply-chain fragmentation, and the Russia-Ukraine war—has renewed scholarly interest in how domestic capabilities and institutional arrangements shape foreign policy. While traditional analyses often emphasize either geopolitical strategy or technological prowess, a political-economy perspective is needed to explain how internal strengths translate into external opportunities.

The framework links literature on economic statecraft and industrial strategy to debates about the political economy of the low-carbon transition (Weiss and Thurbon 2021; Green 2023). Rather than treating diplomacy as signaling alone, it focuses on how states mobilize industrial capabilities, finance, procurement, and standards to shape value capture and risk allocation across borders.

Rather than presuming a one-size-fits-all model of energy statecraft, this paper proposes that the strategic configuration of energy diplomacy is shaped by three interrelated dimensions: (1) the credibility of domestic technological innovation, (2) the institutional coherence of energy governance, and (3) the scope and sophistication of diplomatic infrastructure. Together, these factors determine the extent to which emerging powers can design, implement, and sustain energy diplomacy amid conditions of heightened global uncertainty. To make the argument easier to follow, Table 1 maps how each supplier-side capacity is expected to condition whether each engagement channel opens, deepens, or stalls under crisis conditions.

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Table 1
Mapping supplier capacities to engagement channels (via finance, procurement, and standards)

First, technological credibility, encompassing both actual performance and perceived reliability, shapes how a country’s energy products and expertise are received internationally. States with recognized strengths in low-carbon innovation, such as photovoltaic technology or nuclear safety, are more likely to gain the trust of partner governments, facilitating sustained cooperation in areas such as technology transfer, licensing, and joint research. Conversely, countries facing doubts over product quality or regulatory standards often rely on compensatory strategies, including concessional financing or infrastructure.

Second, institutional coherence—understood as the alignment between a state’s domestic energy, foreign policy, and industrial strategies—affects both the consistency and scalability of energy diplomacy. In centralized political systems, strong inter-agency coordination can facilitate coherent long-term planning and efficient implementation. By contrast, fragmented institutional arrangements, such as those found in federal systems or states with overlapping bureaucratic mandates, often hinder sustained diplomatic alignment, particularly in complex multilateral settings.

Third, the quality and scope of a country’s diplomatic infrastructure, including the global presence of its foreign ministry, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and strategic alliances—conditions its ability to project energy initiatives beyond its borders. States with robust development finance institutions, transnational contractor networks, and access to high-level diplomatic platforms such as BRICS and the G20 are better positioned to align their energy diplomacy with broader foreign-policy objectives and sustain engagement in recipient markets.

Figure 1 summarizes the strategic orientations of China, India, and Russia across three dimensions: technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic reach. The figure is intended as a heuristic device to link observable channels of engagement to underlying state capacities during the 2020-2023 period of overlapping crises.

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Figure 1
Comparing Energy Diplomacy Profiles: China, India, and Russia (2020-2023)

Note: Figure 1 is an ordinal, evidence-coded schematic. For each supplier (2020-2023), technological credibility is coded low/medium/high based on externally validated performance and standards compliance (e.g., certification/safety track record), how quality/standards are treated in procurement and intergovernmental documents, and whether the supplier relies on compensatory instruments (e.g., concessional finance/turnkey delivery) to offset perceived standards risk. Institutional coherence is coded from the observed alignment of energy, industrial, and foreign-policy strategies across agencies, the repeated conversion of MoUs into projects using consistent instruments (finance, procurement, standards), and the stability of coordination during the crisis period. Diplomatic reach is approximated by the breadth of relevant diplomatic infrastructure (SOE footprint, development finance/exim tools, contractor networks) and the frequency/level of bilateral and multilateral engagement; bubble sizes indicate relative (not proportional) reach. See Online Appendix A and Table 3 for the underlying evidence.


Building on this tripartite framework, I expect that higher technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic reach enable states to form more durable and multifaceted partnerships in host countries’ energy transition processes.

The Political Economy of Energy Diplomacy

A political-economy perspective helps explain why emerging powers with different industrial capacities, institutional arrangements, and global networks deploy divergent forms of energy diplomacy. As outlined in Table 3, China exhibits strong host-country engagement and diplomatic diversity, though its technological credibility remains upper-medium—an asymmetry that informs its infrastructure-intensive approach to energy diplomacy. To understand why emerging powers pursue divergent diplomatic strategies, it is essential to move beyond narrow conceptions of energy statecraft and explore the broader structural conditions that enable or constrain their external engagements.

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Table 3
Comparative Strategic Profiles in Brazil’s Energy Sector

Recent scholarship, particularly in the context of vaccine diplomacy (Suzuki and Yang 2023), has emphasized the value of analyzing national capabilities in research, manufacturing, and cross-border distribution. This same analytical lens can be applied to energy diplomacy. For emerging powers, foreign energy initiatives are not solely driven by geopolitical ambition; they are also shaped by varying degrees of technological maturity, industrial capacity, and transnational connectivity.

This paper adopts a political-economy perspective to examine how countries strategically deploy tools such as technological cooperation, targeted investment, and supply-chain integration in response to these internal asymmetries during the global energy transition. States with robust research and innovation ecosystems typically pursue technology-driven partnerships, aiming to enhance the credibility of their emerging energy sectors. In contrast, countries endowed with strong manufacturing capacity often frame their energy diplomacy around export-oriented growth and the localization of production. Meanwhile, those with expansive global distribution networks prioritize bilateral initiatives to boost geopolitical visibility, while selectively engaging multilateral platforms to enhance international legitimacy. These diverse strategic orientations illustrate how energy diplomacy is deeply embedded in broader patterns of national development and global positioning.

Consequently, when emerging powers perceive an opportunity to bolster the global credibility of their energy technologies and industrial innovation, they are more inclined to channel their diplomatic efforts through multilateral frameworks.

Diversity in Energy Diplomacy by Emerging Powers

Building on the conceptual framework, this section examines how supplier-side capacities were converted—or failed to be converted—into concrete engagement bundles in Brazil. Rather than treating China, India, and Russia as simply pursuing different sectoral interests, the analysis asks how technological credibility, institutional coherence, and diplomatic reach interacted with Brazil’s regulatory, procurement, and sectoral institutions. The three cases show different conversion pathways: China’s manufacturing scale and financing capacity facilitated a broad renewable-electricity equipment and infrastructure bundle; India’s institutional entrepreneurship in biofuels generated agenda-setting and technology cooperation but a thinner industrial footprint; and Russia’s nuclear expertise and SOE-led delivery model produced a narrower but more politically sticky fuel-cycle and nuclear cooperation bundle.

China: Renewable Electricity equipment and infrastructure

China’s energy diplomacy is driven by its dominant manufacturing and export capacity in renewable electricity equipment, especially solar PV and wind technology, and supported by infrastructure-heavy strategies and selective multilateralism (Cao 2025; Gong and Lewis 2023).

China has developed relatively balanced capacities to develop, manufacture, finance, and export renewable electricity equipment, particularly solar PV modules, wind power components, and related infrastructure technologies. The launch of the Green Belt and Road Initiative (GBRI) in 2017 marked a shift in its global positioning, reframing infrastructure diplomacy through the lens of sustainable development (Gong and Lewis 2023; Lewis 2023). As part of this initiative, China emphasized international cooperation in renewable energy with developing regions across Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America.

Chinese firms have secured significant global orders in wind and solar power, thanks to their ability to offer cost-effective technologies at scale. The country dominates the global photovoltaic cell market and has leveraged these advantages to build deep partnerships, particularly with developing countries. Its diplomacy benefits from strong state backing, and its SOEs play a central role in marketing renewable technologies abroad.

Although historically weak in R&D credibility, China has improved its international reputation by scaling its market presence. Technological cooperation with BRICS members and joint investments in renewable sectors have helped bolster its image. China’s multilateral engagement remains selective; it uses platforms such as the UN, G20, APEC, and BRICS to legitimize its initiatives but largely pursues state-led bilateral infrastructure deals. For China, the key mechanism was supplier-side scale: the ability of Chinese firms to bundle low-cost equipment, infrastructure delivery, and project services made renewable electricity the sector in which China could most readily convert industrial capacity into procurement-linked engagement.

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Figure 2
Channels of low-carbon energy diplomacy (schematic)

Note: Author’s elaboration. The three channels are used as an analytical scheme in Sections 4-6.


India: Biofuels

India’s energy diplomacy hinges on its high biofuel manufacturing potential and active multilateralism, despite constraints in technological innovation and distribution capacity. India’s strengths lie in its industrial base for biofuel production. Although government-industry collaboration is less institutionalized than in China, India has positioned itself as a leading actor in bioethanol and biodiesel innovation. The creation of the Global Biofuels Alliance in 2023—launched in partnership with Brazil and the U.S.—highlights its ambition to shape global biofuel governance.

India’s energy diplomacy has evolved from a focus on solar through the International Solar Alliance, co-launched with France at COP21 in 2015, to a more recent focus on biofuels, especially ethanol and biodiesel governance. It has invested in bilateral and multilateral channels to diversify its partners and reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains.

Despite lagging in distribution infrastructure and solar R&D, India compensates through international networking, expert exchanges, and an open approach to foreign participation in its domestic energy sector. Bengaluru has emerged as a hub for offshore development and foreign technology investment. For India, the key mechanism was institutional entrepreneurship: its biofuel diplomacy relied less on large-scale project delivery than on agenda-setting, technical cooperation, and coalition-building around ethanol and biodiesel governance.

Russia: Nuclear Energy

Russia’s energy diplomacy is underpinned by strong R&D capacity in nuclear technology and pursued through bilateral, SOE-led partnerships focused on long-term dependency and strategic influence.

Russia, despite its limited manufacturing base, has maintained global influence through its advanced nuclear expertise. The state-owned Rosatom serves as the primary vehicle of nuclear diplomacy, offering comprehensive services—from reactor design and construction to safety training and financing (Gabriel 2024; Szulecki and Overland 2023).

Brazil-Russia nuclear cooperation, however, did not emerge suddenly during the 2020-2023 crisis period. It rested on a longer legal and institutional foundation, including the 1994 bilateral agreement on cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy (República Federativa do Brasil 1994, arts. I–II). This background helps explain why nuclear energy remained a viable channel of engagement even after the geopolitical environment deteriorated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The relationship was also reinforced through the nuclear fuel cycle. In 2022, Brazil’s state-owned Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil (INB) signed a contract with Rosatom-linked suppliers for the supply of natural uranium hexafluoride to the Angra nuclear power plant from 2023 to 2027 (“Rosatom to supply uranium products for Brazil’s Angra plant.” 2022; “Year in review.” 2022). This fuel-cycle dimension matters analytically because it links Russia’s nuclear diplomacy to supply-chain integration, one of the three channels of energy-diplomacy engagement identified in this article.

Following Western sanctions in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, Russia expanded its nuclear outreach as part of a broader strategy to deepen ties with non-Western states. It now has active or planned nuclear energy projects in 29 countries (World Nuclear Association 2023). This expansion has been interpreted as part of a broader diplomatic strategy under sanctions (Szulecki and Overland 2023). Cooperation with Brazil, including agreements with Eletronuclear and expressed interest in small modular reactors, illustrates how this global push is translated into bilateral commitments.

Unlike China and India, Russia’s engagement with multilateral institutions is minimal. Its efforts remain concentrated in bilateral domains, particularly within its geopolitical spheres of influence (e.g., Eurasia, Africa, Latin America). For Russia, the key mechanism was supplier-side concentration: Rosatom’s ability to bundle nuclear expertise, contracting, and fuel-cycle services sustained a narrow sector-specific channel despite geopolitical risk.

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Figure 3
Russia-Brazil nuclear engagement (selected timeline)

Note: Author’s elaboration based on evidence cited in the text (“Eletronuclear assina memorando de entendimento com a Rosatom.” 2021; Nuclear Engineering International 2022; World Nuclear Association 2023).


Brazil as a strategic receptor for Energy Diplomacy

Brazil’s role as a strategic receptor should be understood as a relational and sector-specific concept. In this article, it refers to Brazil’s position vis-à-vis extra-regional emerging powers-China, India, and Russia-within the broader BRICS context. It does not suggest that Brazil is generally passive or subordinate in external relations. In relation to South American neighbors, for example, Brazil has often acted as a regional agenda-setter, investor, and provider of diplomatic and institutional leadership. Receptivity, therefore, denotes not dependency but Brazil’s institutionally mediated capacity to convert external energy initiatives into projects, industrial linkages, and diplomatic partnerships when they fit domestic priorities, regulatory conditions, and sectoral coalitions.

Domestic Energy Landscape and Strategic Appeal

Brazil is recognized as one of the most active countries in the global energy transition (Hochstetler 2020) and is widely considered a promising market for clean energy cooperation. As shown in Table 2, Brazil’s overall energy mix in 2022 consisted of 50.29% fossil fuels, 48.74% renewables, and 0.98% nuclear energy—making it a notable outlier among BRICS countries. In this aggregate energy-mix context, “renewables” includes bioenergy. In the sectoral analysis that follows, however, I distinguish renewable electricity generation, especially hydro, solar, and wind, from biofuels because they involve different regulatory agencies, market structures, and diplomatic instruments.

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Table 2
Energy Mix in BRICS Original Member Countries (2022)

Within the electricity sector, Brazil is even more exceptional. As of 2020, approximately 85% of Brazil’s electricity was generated from renewable sources, with hydroelectric power alone accounting for over 60%. According to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, the share of fossil fuels in electricity generation has declined over time, while renewable electricity generation and nuclear power have gradually increased (see Figure 4).

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Figure 4
Electricity Generation by Source in Brazil (2000-2020)

This structural configuration makes Brazil an attractive receptor of foreign energy engagement. Three factors shape its receptivity to energy diplomacy:

Key Features of the Brazilian Energy Market

Strategic Resource Endowments and Priority Sectors

Brazil’s long-term energy strategy, as outlined in the National Energy Plan 2050 (PNE2050), identifies four priority areas: (1) renewable electricity sources, including hydro, solar, and wind, (2) biofuels, (3) nuclear energy, and (4) oil and gas. Brazil ranks second globally in hydroelectric power generation, second in biofuel production, and seventh in uranium reserves. These rich endowments make Brazil a favorable partner for countries aiming to engage in technology transfer, production partnerships, and long-term energy cooperation. Unlike energy exporters such as Russia or China, whose diplomacy is tied to surplus capacity, Brazil offers a receptive and scalable domestic platform for innovation and market expansion.

Multi-level Governance and Subnational Diplomacy

Energy policy in Brazil is shaped not only by the federal government but also by powerful state-level actors. States such as São Paulo and Minas Gerais have actively promoted energy cooperation with emerging powers through subnational diplomacy. These engagements often involve public-private partnerships, technology parks, and memoranda of understanding with foreign entities, particularly from China and India.

In contrast, nuclear diplomacy, due to its strategic sensitivity, remains centralized under the federal government, particularly via coordination with Eletronuclear and the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN). This division of responsibility reflects a hybrid model of federal and decentralized energy diplomacy.

Regulatory Openness and Depoliticized Supplier Criteria

Brazil’s energy sectors are overseen by independent regulatory bodies. The National Petroleum Agency (ANP) manages oil, gas, and biofuels; the National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL) regulates electricity; and the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) oversees nuclear energy. These agencies operate under clear technical mandates and ensure supplier compliance with safety and efficiency standards.

Importantly, Brazil maintains an open stance toward all supplier countries and firms that meet regulatory criteria. Unlike many Western countries, Brazil does not incorporate political considerations such as democracy or human rights into energy procurement decisions. This pragmatic posture reinforces Brazil’s receptivity to energy diplomacy from a diverse range of emerging and established powers.

Diplomatic Pragmatism and Strategic Non-alignment

Across the Bolsonaro administration and the early Lula period (2020-2023), Brazil’s foreign policy reflected a pragmatic approach rooted in non-alignment (Brun and Covarrubias 2024; Faleiro 2025). Successive governments have sought to diversify energy partnerships while minimizing entanglement in great power rivalries. This is evident in Brazil’s simultaneous participation in China’s Green BRI initiatives, India’s Global Biofuels Alliance, and exploratory cooperation with Russia on nuclear energy. Rather than aligning with any one strategic bloc, Brazil has strategically positioned itself as an intermediary capable of leveraging multiple partnerships.

This non-alignment also facilitates Brazil’s role in multilateral energy governance. Brazil has hosted and participated in key energy forums, including BRICS energy summits, G20 working groups, and UN climate platforms. Its leadership around COP30 in Belém (10-21 November 2025) underscores its growing normative influence in global climate and energy discussions (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 2025).

Sectoral Engagements with China, India, and Russia

Brazil’s engagement with China is most advanced in renewable electricity, particularly solar and wind equipment, project development, and related infrastructure. The crisis period matters here because overlapping shocks heightened uncertainty in supply and finance, elevating the premium on delivery capacity and procurement-linked packages that can be converted into bankable projects. Chinese firms have participated in major wind and solar projects across the country, often in partnership with Brazilian state governments or development banks. Investment flows from China are supported by a dense diplomatic network and growing SOE-SOE ties.

At the project level, competition and localization have been tied to tangible procurement and manufacturing moves. For example, JinkoSolar agreed to supply approximately 522 MW of modules for Phase I of the Santa Luzia utility-scale PV project in Paraíba (“JinkoSolar to Supply Approximately 522 MW of Modules for Phase I of the Santa Luzia Utility PV Project Complex in Brazil.” 2022). TrinaTracker’s Brazil manufacturing move, reported in sectoral sources, should also be understood in light of the company’s broader corporate model as a provider of solar tracking systems, project design, commissioning, O&M, and after-sales services (PV Tech 2023; TrinaSolar 2026). These cases show that China’s engagement was not limited to diplomatic declaration or one-off equipment exports; it involved procurement-linked participation in project execution and, in the case of trackers, a partial move toward local manufacturing and service capacity.

Chinese engagement in Brazil also extends beyond solar-module supply into grid infrastructure and generation assets. State Grid Brazil Holding’s sustainability reporting highlights its role in transmission-system construction, operation, and maintenance in Brazil, while SPIC Brasil’s corporate profile identifies a diversified portfolio including hydropower, wind farms, solar power plants, and participation in GNA (State Grid Brazil Holding 2025; SPIC Brasil 2026). These corporate materials support the interpretation of China’s Brazil strategy as an infrastructure-heavy electricity-sector bundle, centered on renewable generation and grid integration, rather than a narrow solar-export strategy.

Brazil’s gatekeeping in renewables operates through three institutional choke points that map directly onto the three channels of engagement. First, ANEEL’s auction design and grid-connection rules shape whether technology cooperation is merely commercial sourcing or becomes sustained operational learning: eligibility criteria, delivery/commissioning obligations, and interconnection requirements reward suppliers that can document performance and comply with technical standards, while penalizing delays that often fall on cross-border supply chains.

Second, the procurement and financing architecture around utility-scale projects conditions whether low-cost imports translate into durable industrial presence. Where developers rely on public or quasi-public finance, and where procurement packages are structured around delivery guarantees, O&M servicing, and local supplier networks, foreign firms have stronger incentives to invest in factories, service centers, and training partnerships rather than limit engagement to equipment shipment.

Third, subnational industrial-policy instruments and permitting processes (tax incentives, land and licensing support, and locally negotiated expectations about jobs and local sourcing) interact with domestic contestation over import-led price competition. That interaction affects the political sustainability of localization strategies and, in turn, whether procurement-linked packages generate stable backward linkages into Brazilian manufacturing and services.

Taken together, these gatekeeping institutions filter supplier offers by rewarding reliable delivery and compliance, but they also determine the distributive balance between rapid deployment (cheaper modules, faster buildout) and domestic industrial upgrading—hence whether the renewables bundle becomes a durable platform for long-term cooperation.

To reduce sector-driven interpretations, I also trace China’s more limited engagement outside renewable electricity. In Brazil’s biofuels and nuclear sectors during 2020-2023, the observable bundle remained comparatively shallow—fewer procurement-linked localization moves and fewer long-horizon contracting arrangements—relative to renewables. This pattern is consistent with constraints in converting diplomacy into sector-specific procurement/standards leverage, rather than with sector characteristics alone.

With India, Brazil has expanded collaboration in biofuel research and commercialization. The crisis period mattered because energy-price shocks and supply risks elevated liquid-fuel security, pushing biofuels higher on bilateral agendas and in project conversion discussions. The two countries signed a series of MOUs and academic exchange agreements during 2021-2023, culminating in Brazil’s role as a founding partner of the Global Biofuels Alliance. Indian firms have also explored manufacturing partnerships with Brazilian ethanol producers, aiming to create a South-South model of sustainable fuel production.

Concrete project linkages are also observable in biofuels. In 2024, Brazil’s Be8 and India’s Praj Industries signed a licensing agreement for an ethanol plant in Passo Fundo (Rio Grande do Sul), planned to be operational in 2026 with an investment reported at around R$1 billion (“Be8 signs process, design and engineering license agreement for Ethanol plant with Indian company Praj.” 2026; “Brazilian Be8 inks licensing agreement with Praj industries for Ethanol plant.” 2024). This complements intergovernmental cooperation, including the India-Brazil (Alliance for Bioenergy and Biofuels) endorsed at the 8th Joint Commission Meeting in Brasília (Ministry of External Affairs of India 2022). In biofuels, durability is mediated less by one-off MOUs than by the stability of Brazil’s fuel-market regulation under the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) and by coalition politics among agribusiness, ethanol producers, and downstream distributors that jointly determine demand certainty and investment incentives.

In biofuels, the decisive gate is less procurement auctions than fuel-market regulation and coalition-backed demand commitments, which jointly determine whether cooperation becomes bankable. ANP’s oversight of biofuel production authorization, quality specifications, and downstream compliance clarifies the conditions under which new capacity can access the domestic market and sell into regulated distribution channels. These rules are central to the conversion pathway: technology cooperation and licensing agreements remain thin unless they can be underwritten by credible offtake expectations.

Demand certainty hinges on how blending mandates, certification or crediting arrangements, and pricing pass-through are administered, because these institutions govern expected volumes, margins, and compliance risks for producers and distributors. Here, domestic political-economy coalitions—agribusiness producers, ethanol mills, fuel distributors, and transport interests—mediate regulatory stability and the credibility of long-term demand signals, shaping whether policy commitments survive price volatility and political turnover.

Supply-chain integration (for enzymes, equipment, and plant services) is therefore gated by regulatory predictability: when ANP-regulated market rules and coalition bargains provide stable demand and investment incentives, India–Brazil cooperation can scale from agenda-setting and R&D into durable industrial ties; when those signals weaken, cooperation tends to revert to technical exchange and episodic diplomatic initiatives.

To reduce sector-driven interpretations, I also consider India’s more limited engagement outside biofuels. In Brazil’s renewables and nuclear sectors during 2020-2023, the observable bundle was thinner—fewer project conversions and a more limited industrial footprint—relative to China’s renewables engagement and Russia’s nuclear engagement. This pattern points to constraints in industrial presence and diplomatic reach, not sector characteristics alone.

Russia-Brazil cooperation is more narrowly focused on nuclear energy. The crisis period matters here because heightened geopolitical risk politicizes high-sensitivity sectors, increasing the value of safeguards, licensing, and long-term contracting in sustaining cooperation. While Brazil has maintained its commitment to non-proliferation and the peaceful use of nuclear technology, it has welcomed cooperation with Rosatom in areas such as modular reactor development and nuclear medicine. These initiatives remain exploratory but symbolize Brazil’s willingness to engage across the technological spectrum.

Russia’s engagement can likewise be pinned to specific agreements in the nuclear fuel-cycle and research infrastructure. In 2021, Eletronuclear and Rosatom signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation and information exchange, and in 2022 Brazil’s INB signed a contract with Rosatom for the supply of 330 tonnes of natural uranium hexafluoride to Angra from 2023 to 2027 (Da Agência CanalEnergia 2021; World Nuclear Association 2023). Rosatom-affiliated suppliers also delivered neutron-flux control equipment to Brazil’s IPR-R1 TRIGA research reactor under a modernization contract (Nuclear Engineering International 2022). In nuclear, where procurement and oversight are centralized under federal bodies (Eletronuclear, the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN), and INB), durable linkages depend on licensing and safeguards requirements and on the fiscal-industrial politics that sustain long-term contracting—conditions that slow expansion but can lock cooperation in once institutionalized.

Nuclear cooperation is filtered through a more centralized—and therefore more politically sensitive—gatekeeping structure than renewables or biofuels. Because CNEN licensing and safeguards compliance set hard constraints on reactor-related cooperation, expressions of interest (including in small modular reactors) translate into durable linkages only when they can be routed through an approved regulatory pathway, financing plan, and procurement sequence anchored by federal entities. This sequencing matters for the engagement bundle: technology cooperation can proceed through research infrastructure and medical applications, but scale-up to power-generation projects is gated by licensing milestones and the allocation of long-term fiscal commitments.

Eletronuclear’s role as operator and project counterpart shapes the conversion of diplomatic initiatives into contracts, while INB’s position in the fuel cycle makes long-term supply arrangements a core instrument of interdependence.

Compared with market-based procurement, this centralized gate reduces the scope for rapid diffusion and private entry, yet it increases stickiness: once licensing, safeguards, and fuel-cycle contracts are in place, cooperation can persist through long horizons even when the geopolitical environment deteriorates. In short, Russia’s nuclear engagement with Brazil is gated less by general openness to suppliers than by centralized regulatory approval and the fiscal–industrial politics required to sustain long-term contracting—and these same gates define both the limits and the leverage of nuclear diplomacy.

By contrast, Russia’s engagement in Brazil’s renewables and biofuels sectors remained limited during 2020-2023, with few observable procurement- or finance-linked bundles and a much thinner corporate footprint. This contrast is consistent with weaker diplomatic reach and market instruments outside the nuclear domain.

Taken together, these sectoral patterns show that Brazil’s receptivity did not operate as general openness to all external suppliers. It functioned as a set of sector-specific gatekeeping mechanisms. In renewable electricity, market-based procurement and grid regulation rewarded suppliers able to deliver low-cost equipment and infrastructure packages but also generated tension between rapid deployment and local industrial upgrading. In biofuels, cooperation depended less on procurement than on regulatory demand signals, blending mandates, and coalition support among producers and distributors. In nuclear energy, centralized licensing, safeguards, and fuel-cycle institutions slowed project expansion but made long-term cooperation more durable once formalized. These differences explain why China’s engagement became broad and infrastructure-heavy, India’s remained institution-centered and selectively industrialized, and Russia’s became narrow but sticky.

Comparative Analysis and Strategic Implications

Despite shared ambitions as emerging powers, China, India, and Russia employ divergent energy diplomacy strategies, shaped by distinct technological capacities, industrial structures, and geopolitical preferences. Brazil’s multi-vector engagement reveals both the appeal and limitations of each approach. This comparative analysis identifies how value capture, risk allocation, and sector-specific gatekeeping shaped the durability of each engagement bundle.

Comparative Patterns among Emerging Powers

A comparison of China, India, and Russia reveals three major axes of divergence in energy diplomacy: technological orientation, diplomatic modality, and instruments of engagement. First, in terms of technological orientation, China leverages its industrial dominance by promoting large-scale infrastructure and manufacturing-based renewables, particularly in solar and wind. India, by contrast, focuses on innovation niches, most notably in biofuels, while positioning itself as a normative leader in multilateral fora. Russia adopts a high-tech exclusivity model, emphasizing nuclear diplomacy as a strategic tool to cultivate long-term dependence among partner countries.

Second, these states differ significantly in their diplomatic modalities. China pursues a hybrid approach that combines bilateral financing mechanisms with selective multilateralism, using platforms like BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative to enhance legitimacy while retaining strategic flexibility. India adopts a more open and inclusive multilateral strategy, aligning with South-South initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance and the Global Biofuels Alliance. Russia, constrained by geopolitical tensions and sanctions, largely avoids multilateral engagement and instead relies on state-to-state bilateralism, where its diplomatic posture is tightly linked to broader geostrategic considerations.

Third, their instruments of energy diplomacy also diverge. China offers an integrated package of technology, financing, and infrastructure development, primarily through its state-owned enterprises (SOEs). India emphasizes joint research projects, institutional capacity-building, and leadership in agenda-setting within global governance frameworks. Russia provides end-to-end nuclear energy solutions, ranging from reactor construction to fuel supply and waste management, anchored in long-term contracts that lock recipient states into extended technical and political dependencies.

Brazil’s Role as a Strategic Receptor

Brazil does not engage with foreign energy diplomacy initiatives passively; rather, it selectively curates its partnerships to align with domestic development priorities and long-term strategic goals. Its receptivity is not rooted in dependency, but in a pragmatic set of enabling conditions. First, Brazil possesses an institutional architecture that upholds regulatory rigor while avoiding overt political favoritism in the selection of international partners. Second, its resource-rich and diversified energy matrix makes it an attractive site for collaboration across a wide spectrum of technologies, including hydro, wind, solar, biofuels, and nuclear. Third, Brazil’s tradition of non-aligned foreign policy affords it strategic flexibility, enabling simultaneous cooperation with both Global North and Global South actors.

These conditions empower Brazil to adopt a multi-vector energy diplomacy strategy. It engages with China on renewable electricity equipment and infrastructure, collaborates with India on biofuels and institutional innovation, and maintains long-term nuclear partnerships with Russia—all without becoming structurally dependent on any single actor. In this sense, Brazil exemplifies a receptive yet autonomous actor, navigating global energy diplomacy with both strategic selectivity and normative consistency.

Implications for Global Energy Governance

The interplay between the strategic approaches of emerging powers and Brazil’s hybrid positioning yields several broader implications for the evolving landscape of global energy diplomacy.

First, it highlights the fragmentation of global energy governance: rather than converging toward a unified regime, the field is increasingly characterized by competitive and differentiated models shaped by national industrial strengths and geopolitical interests.

Second, Brazil’s case illustrates a rescaling of South-South cooperation—one that is less ideologically driven than often assumed. Instead, such cooperation is pragmatic, adaptive, and issue-specific, guided by domestic policy priorities rather than normative alignment alone.

Third, Brazil’s multi-vector engagements underscore the need for interoperable frameworks. As recipient countries simultaneously engage with multiple partners, the absence of harmonized technical standards, financing protocols, and governance principles risks inefficiencies and redundancy. Developing interoperable systems will be critical to enhancing coherence, minimizing friction, and maximizing developmental impact across diverse partnerships.

Post-2023 Developments (2024–2026): Brief Follow-up

The core analysis in this article is anchored in the overlapping crisis period of 2020-2023. However, a brief follow-up on developments after 2023 helps clarify whether the crisis-era channels identified here persisted once immediate shocks began to subside.

In renewables, Brazil’s large-scale import dependence and intense supplier competition continued beyond 2023. Global oversupply and continued Chinese manufacturing scale contributed to a sharp decline in PV module prices in 2024, easing cost constraints for rapid deployment and reinforcing the salience of procurement and localization strategies (Jacobo 2024).

In biofuels, project-level ties also extended beyond 2023. In 2024, Brazil’s Be8 and India’s Praj Industries signed a licensing agreement for an ethanol plant in Passo Fundo (Rio Grande do Sul), planned to be operational in 2026 with an investment reported at around R$1 billion (“Be8 signs agreement with Praj for the elaboration of the conceptual project of Ethanol Unit.” 2026; “Brazilian Be8 inks licensing agreement with Praj industries for Ethanol plant.” 2024). At the multilateral level, Brazil’s hosting of COP30 in Belém further amplified its agenda-setting role and provided an additional venue for signaling credibility and aligning partnerships beyond the crisis period.

Conclusion

This article has analyzed the energy diplomacy strategies of China, India, and Russia during a period of overlapping global crises and examined how Brazil filtered these engagements as a receptive but selective partner. Drawing on a comparative framework that integrates technological capacity, institutional arrangements, and diplomatic modality, I find that emerging power strategies are both diverse and path dependent.

China’s energy diplomacy leverages scale, infrastructure, and manufacturing advantages to promote a state-led, infrastructure-intensive approach. India, by contrast, emphasizes institutional leadership and biofuel innovation through multilateral and South-South platforms. Russia pursues a high-tech, bilateral strategy centered on nuclear technology and long-term contractual dependency. Each model reflects not only national industrial structures but also distinct geopolitical calculations.

Brazil’s strategic autonomy and regulatory openness have enabled it to act as an agile and selective receptor. Rather than aligning with any single partner, Brazil has cultivated overlapping partnerships, aligning each engagement with domestic policy goals and sectoral strengths. Its approach reflects a form of “strategic multi-alignment” rooted in pragmatic non-alignment.

These dynamics reveal three key insights:

  1. Energy diplomacy is increasingly multipolar, with no single dominant template among emerging powers.

  2. South-South cooperation is not ideologically uniform but selectively constructed and strategically instrumental.

  3. Recipient countries like Brazil play an active role, filtering and shaping foreign engagements based on domestic constraints and opportunities.

Supplier competition can expand supply in receptive transition markets by lowering equipment costs and widening access to technology, provided that domestic rules and market openness enable rapid project conversion from “declarations” to “deals,” as reflected in the price, import, and project-conversion patterns discussed above (e.g., Jinko Solar’s Santa Luzia supply and Trina Tracker’s local manufacturing; see Section 5.4).

These findings suggest that energy diplomacy in the Global South is not merely an extension of technological capabilities, but rather a function of institutional adaptability and diplomatic architecture. The tripartite framework proposed here offers a basis for future comparative studies on strategic engagement in decarbonization efforts.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Numbers JP25K04976, JP24K21177, and JP23H00041). This article also benefited from research activities conducted under competitively funded projects, including: “Does the global ESG trend pose risks to global food security? Perspectives from Brazil and Japan”; “Japan’s environmental diplomacy and Latin American responses”; and “East Asia and Latin America in closer proximity: toward the formation of a new Pacific world.” An earlier version of this work was circulated via jxiv (doi:10.51094/jxiv.1373).

References

Data Availability Statement:

The replication materials supporting the findings of this study, including the evidence matrix, coding rules, source list, and the data underlying Tables 1 and 3 and Figure 1, are available in the Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/BKG6QW.

Online Appendix A

Coding rules for Figure 1 placements. Figure 1 positions suppliers on three ordinal axes (Low/Medium/High) for the 2020-2023 crisis period, based on a pre-specified codebook and triangulated evidence (policy documents and agreements, multilateral communiqués, corporate disclosures, and project-level information). Technological credibility is coded as High when there is consistent external validation of performance/safety and routine acceptance in procurement and standards settings; as Medium when credibility is uneven across sub-sectors or still contested; and as Low when standards are concerned regularly require compensatory instruments. Institutional coherence is coded as High when energy/industrial/foreign-policy strategies are aligned across agencies and repeatedly convert MoUs into projects via consistent instruments; as Medium when alignment exists but implementation is episodic; and as Low when fragmentation/mandate overlap impedes project conversion. Diplomatic reach is coded from the breadth of infrastructure and platforms mobilized (SOEs, development finance/exim tools, contractor networks, and bilateral/multilateral venues); bubble sizes represent relative categories rather than proportional volumes.

Associate Editors:

Haroldo Ramanzini Junior (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7105-6237)

Scientific Editors:

Haroldo Ramanzini Junior (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7105-6237)

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    11 Sept 2026
  • Date of issue
    2026

History

  • Received
    26 Mar 2026
  • Accepted
    13 July 2026
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