Wind energy has
burst in Brazil in recent years and has climbed to eighth place in the
world ranking, with installed wind farm capacity that has multiplied
fifteen times in the last decade.
Brazil
from having 1 GW of installed capacity with wind turbines, in 2010, to
15.1 GW this year, distributed in 600 wind farms in 12 states of Brazil,
according to the latest data from the Brazilian Wind Energy Association
(ABEEólica).
Wind energy has gained ground and currently
represents 9.2% of the national electricity matrix, behind only
hydroelectric power plants, with 60.3%.
Despite its solid progress,
this source of renewable energy still has a wide window of growth in the
country, according to specialists, and it is expected that in 2023
there will be close to 19.4 GW of installed wind capacity, taking into
account the auctions already made and contracts signed in the free
market.
“We have a very big growth perspective, we see that wind
and solar are the sources that will grow the most in Brazil in the next
thirty years,” the president of ABEEólica, Elbia Silva Gannoum, told
Efe.
Despite the achievements in recent years, thanks to the
improvement of technology, competitiveness and good prospects for the
future, Silva stressed that the weakened situation of the Brazilian
economy has slowed the total takeoff of the sector by reducing the
contracting of energy in regulated auctions.
Brazil entered into a
deep recession between 2015 and 2016, when its Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) lost around seven percentage points, and between 2017 and 2018 the
economy only grew by 2%.
The forecasts for this year continue
weak and, according to the projections of the financial market, the GIP
of the South American giant will rise a shy 0.8% in 2019.
“The
economy is making it difficult, when there is economic growth, we are
going to see a bigger growth in the sector, but we still have a market
in the middle that is growing a lot and with a very good future
outlook”, added the president of ABEEólica.
The northeast region
concentrates most of the wind farms in Brazil, a country with favorable
climatic conditions, irrigated by a regular and intense wind, and where
wind turbines have proliferated.
In the municipality of Rio do
Fogo, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, is the first installation of
the Spanish multinational Iberdrola in the development of renewable
energies in that country, inaugurated in 2006, and which represents the
starting point of an enterprise that has expanded strongly in the last
decade.
Iberdrola, present in the South American country through
its subsidiary Neoenergia, has 17 wind farms in operation, distributed
in the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba and Bahia (northeast),
with an installed capacity of 516 megawatts (MW), and has another 15
under construction.
With the completion of the implementation of
all the wind farm projects, Iberdrola’s portfolio of assets in operation
in wind energy will total around 1 GW in 2022.
The growth of
Iberdrola’s wind projects in Brazil has accompanied that of the sector
itself in the country, where there is already a national production
chain, with six turbine manufacturers in Brazilian soil.
“These
sources suffered technological changes that increase their productivity
and can compete with the cheapest source, hydroelectric power, whose
resources are running out,” said Silva.
