In February 2021, the courts ordered that the government of SP discloses data regarding the IncentivAuto Program, which was the focus of a case by the group Families for the Climate (FpC) in relation to the subsidies offered to the automotive sector without any climate considerations. At the time, Caio Borges, coordinator of the iCS Law and Climate portfolio, explained that the decision marked an important and pioneering step “to insert the climate dimension into the debate regarding the benefits and costs of policies of economic stimulus to industrial sectors with a high energy footprint carbon,” also remembering that transparency is a fundamental requirement for social control.

The group’s efforts continued and, on November 10 , a new action was filed with the Court of Appeals of São Paulo, no longer just to access information from the Program, but now with a request for the government of São Paulo to cancel the IncentivAuto or modify it so that it only finances projects that include measures for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the implementation of less polluting technologies, in accordance with the climate policy of the state.

The automobile industry is a major economic and political player in São Paulo, and the program, created in 2019, grants public financing of at least R$ 1 billion to new projects without establishing the reduction of emissions or the transparency of the benefited actions, maintaining a long tradition of tax incentives and subsidies by taxpayers in São Paulo and Brazil.