Brazilian energy sector: challenges for this decade

It is important to analyze our goals and challenges for the new year at the beginning of each year. I reflected on the Brazilian electricity and energy sector from a global perspective.

I would like to share my perspective on the challenges for 2025 and the challenges of this decade. This reflection began while I was preparing for the Public Hearing that was held in Brasília, on 12/12/2024 in the Chamber of Deputies.

On this date, I had the mission of representing ABGD (Brazilian Association of Distributed Generation) taking contributions to the Mines and Energy Commission on the 2050 Energy Matrix.

With a very short time to speak at the hearing and complex reflections, it was impossible to make myself understood, so I seek to explain the reflections made and complement them with some points of view. Today I bring two of these items.

Sustainable Development of the Amazon

A Amazon It is not, and never has been, an unpopulated land. I love the way and care with which the native peoples define themselves and we, who arrived later, need to preserve the definition of this term.

The groups that arrived to the indigenous peoples built the Legal Amazon that we know today, that is, riverside dwellers, rubber tappers, extractivists, quilombolas, people from all over, Brazilians who face environmental, socioeconomic and infrastructure challenges at greater rates than other regions of Brazil, mainly in relation to energy, sanitation and drinking water for consumption.

According to the 2022 Demographic Census, this region covers 5 million square kilometers with 27,8 million inhabitants. I really like a work that has been done for 4 years by FGV (Fundação Getúlio Vargas), called Amazonian Dialogues.

This work has the of the industries of the Manaus Free Trade Zone through CIEAM (Center of Industries of Amazonas) and brings light to the challenges of undertaking in the Amazon, living in the Amazon, caring for the Amazon, carrying out projects in the Amazon and having the responsibility of showing the world its potential (the term Amazon was repeated several times, but it is intentional, copyright of this author to draw the reader's attention).

Here I list the challenges that I consider to have the greatest impact on the development of the Brazilian energy sector and the economic development of the region:

1. Our first challenge as a nation is to bring energy to the approximately 1 million people without energy, focusing on renewable energy with battery storage so that they can have autonomy and economic development in their communities. In addition, we must the gradual energy transition of approximately 3 million Brazilians who receive energy from thermoelectric sources;
2. An even greater challenge is to new energy auctions so that they can be offered with the premise of using renewable energy with energy storage by batteries (necessary due to the intermittency of renewables), thus replacing the use of fossil fuels for the generation of electricity in the Amazon;
3. We need to list other challenges, just as important, without any scale of value, which are the reforestation of abandoned areas, cybersecurity for borders and infrastructure and logistics for navigable rivers, industry and low-carbon agriculture.

I ask everyone to consider that this is a list only focused on the climate emergency and economic development (energy, logistics infrastructure, cybersecurity including against deforestation and recovery of ruined areas).

I would like to conclude this first challenge by considering that it is a challenge for the Brazilian nation and requires will and technology. I bring a definition from Olga Tokarckuz, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2018.

She says: “important things are those that are unique and over which a terrible threat of destruction hangs.” The Amazon needs us to recognize that its sustainable development is an “important thing” because it is unique.

Competition for mineral resources

The strategic minerals used to achieve the energy transition are becoming increasingly important to fulfill this commitment that countries have made, mainly in converting combustion engines to electric motors and in using renewable energy.

Os eletric cars, in addition to lithium for batteries, use 6 times more minerals than combustion cars. Brazil already has a tradition in extracting minerals through large mining companies that lead the iron ore chain, such as Vale, Angloamérica and Rio Tinto.

What is different about this 83-year history of mining is that the ANM (National Mining Agency) was created in 2017, which brought agility to the licensing, operation and legal security processes for the entry of foreign companies into the mineral extraction sector in Brazil.

The Brazilian mining sector received, mainly from 2018 onwards (after the creation of the ANM), the famous junior mining companies, coming from Canada and Australia, countries with a strong mining tradition.

These countries are betting on the extraction of strategic minerals, which are those that meet the energy transition, such as lithium, nickel, silicon and minerals called rare earths.

Renewable sources use various minerals, such as batteries with lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, iron, phosphate, rare earths and photovoltaic modules, with silicon and aluminum, for example.

Lithium is a strategic mineral and is at the heart of the energy transition. It has several industrial applications and has been called the oil of the 21st century, with 74% of it being used in portable electronic products (mainly cell phones).

The largest reserves are in Latin America, especially Chile (leader), followed by Argentina and Brazil (Jequitinhonha Valley – North of Minas Gerais and Borborema – Northeast).

Brazil has enormous potential that has already been explored, but we have at least 3 pressing challenges:

1. We need to invest in transforming minerals into cells for industrial use (currently made in China) that are imported due to the lack of a national processing process, as is the case with silicon used for photovoltaic s;
2. We need to work on the obstacles to infrastructure, distribution and flow of mineral production from the energy transition. Infrastructure for setting up new mines and ing the distribution and flow of minerals, with low-cost logistics operations that will encourage the competitiveness of Brazilian products;
3. It is important to highlight the importance of developing t efforts and working on a third challenge, which would be the creation of recycling programs for lithium batteries (whether for vehicles, electronics or energy storage).

At first, I share these two immense challenges, but I firmly believe that Brazil is fully capable of emerging victorious from these great battles.

As I mentioned, there is a need for t efforts to work together between industries, academia, technological institutes, society (regional and local populations), governments and industry associations. Our job is to seek policies, innovative strategic actions and proposals to promote the development of the Brazilian energy sector.

We will soon talk about another challenge for this decade: modernization of the Brazilian electricity sector and the challenges of accessing renewable sources to transmission and distribution lines, with the insertion of energy storage using batteries, transforming them into smart grids.

Happy 2025 to everyone. Together building a better country.

The opinions and information expressed are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the author. Canal Solar.