Enel Green Power has been helping to push Brazil, Latin America’s largest oil producer, to becoming a leading light in renewable energy, with nearly half of its production coming from green sources.
Brazil is the second largest oil producer in Latin America, but renewable sources account for about 44 percent of domestic energy production and that percentage is set to keep on growing. It has become a renewable energy nation.
According to the UN’s Economy Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, together Latin American countries produce an amount of renewable energy that is equivalent to nearly 1.3 billion barrels of oil per year, and Brazil alone accounts for 60 percent of this green energy wave.
During his visit in 2011 Barack Obama acknowledged that ‘as regards the green economy, Brazil is the master from which the United States has a lot to learn’. And the investment planned by the federal government up to 2020 confirm an unusual situation in which Brazil is a model for the United States.
Brazil is the country of renewable energy not only because of the abundance of biomass plants and hydropower facilities, but also because of the development of wind and solar power over the past few years, both of which have been stimulated by the 2030 National Energy Plan.
According to the Associação Brasileira de Energia Eolica, in 2012 wind power generation in Brazil grew by 73 percent, and the average monthly capacity amounted to 556 megawatts. With an investment of about $1.77 billion and 15,000 new direct and indirect jobs, wind power has begun to challenge the gas industry.
Pushed by the wind, Enel Green Power has become a leading figure in the local renewable energy industry. It began its Brazilian adventure in the hydropower sector, but in 2010, when the company was listed on the stock market, it began to compete in the development of wind power with its participation in the Brazilian New Energy public tender.
Enel Green Power started to build new wind farms (http://www.enelgreenpower.com/en-GB/company/worldwide/brazil/) in the States of Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte, which will allow it to reach a total installed capacity of 287MW in Brazil by 2014.
Its ongoing projects are an example of sustainability and also contribute to the further development of renewable energy, with its most important being the Cristal, Primavera and Sao Judas wind farms in the State of Bahia. The energy produced by the new facilities will be injected into the national interconnection system, reducing the amount of energy on the grid that comes from fossil-fuel powered plants.
These three plants, located in semi-arid regions, will also aid development of infrastructure that up to now hasn’t been widely installed in this region, and will provide electricity to about 245,000 Brazilian households, avoiding about 270,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions in the process.
Wind energy in Brazil
- End 1997: 3 MW
- End 1998: 17 MW (+466.7 %)
- End 1999: 19 MW (+11.8 %)
- End 2000: 22 MW (+15.8 %)
- End 2001: 24 MW (+9.1 %)
- End 2002: 22 MW (-8.3 %)
- End 2003: 24 MW (+9.1 %)
- End 2004: 24 MW (- %)
- End 2005: 29 MW (+20.9 %)
- End 2006: 237 MW (+717.3 %)
- End 2007: 247 MW (+4.3 %)
- End 2008: 339 MW (+37.3 %)
- End 2009: 606 MW (+78.8 %)
- End 2010: 931 MW (+53.7 %)
- End 2011: 1,429 MW (+53.5 %)
- End 2012: 2,508 MW (+75.6 %)