The Spanish multinational Iberdrola this Wednesday inaugurated its largest renewable energy plant in Brazil and Latin America. The so-called Paraíba Neoenergía Renewable Complex is located in Santa Luzia, a town about 300 kilometers inland in the state of Paraíba, one of the cities in northeastern Brazil overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. With 136 wind turbines and 228,000 solar panels spread over a park of more than 8,000 hectares, it has an installed capacity of 600 megawatts (MW) and has been operational for a year.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has traveled to the plant to preside over a ceremony at which he did not speak. Alongside him, Iberdrola President Ignacio Sánchez Galán stressed that the company maintains its commitment to Brazil, where it has been based for 25 years, that this is a new step “towards a system less dependent on fossil fuels”. and his final relationship with the President, who is nearing the end of his three-month term.
Aside from its size, the main innovation of the Neoenergia complex (Iberdrola’s subsidiary in Brazil), according to the company, is that it optimizes assets and reduces costs by combining solar and wind power generation assets. Something new in Brazil. Galán explained: “It is the first hybrid park in Brazil. It uses a 370-kilometer transmission line that we built (connected) to a photovoltaic farm and a wind farm, so it produces electricity practically 24 hours a day.” During the day, thanks to the sun; night with the wind
The investment in the complex is around 3,500 million reais (620 million euros, 670 million dollars). With 40 million customers in Brazil, Neoenergia is one of the most important electricity companies in the largest Latin American economy.
Lula did not make a speech, much to the chagrin of many Neoenergia staff present, who chanted his name. The president is facing an intense trip to China and wanted to keep his voice and give weight to the governor of Paraíba, João Azevedo, according to the spokesman for the presidency of the republic.
Silverio Olegario, a 50-year-old farmer, vividly remembers the day in 2012 when workers showed up in his village — which now sits in the clean energy park — and the potential of those lands to generate electricity wind spoke . He listened carefully because since the 1985 plague that forever devastated the cotton crops that supported his family for generations, life has been very complicated, he told a group of journalists invited by Neoenergia on Tuesday. Nobody wanted the land, not even at bargain prices. And out of nowhere, someone wanted to rent it. Now, along with his mother and brothers, he receives rent on the land they inherited. “The rental income is not much because we are 23 siblings,” says Olegario, who is the father of two children.
Before signing a 35-year lease, he traveled with other expedition neighbors to the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Norte to see a mill facility for himself. Until then, I only knew her from TV. Now he lives and runs a restaurant surrounded by windmills with 64 meter wide blades at a distance. He started the business to feed the thousands of workers who were building the park. He says that in the pandemic, as everything is al fresco, the restaurant has received up to 400 Sunday guests over the weekend. Business is less good now, but he dreams of the place becoming a tourist destination. Natural attractions, he emphasizes, are not lacking.
Although these lands were coveted by three renewable energy companies thanks to the constant wind and frequent sun, his family’s lands came from his great-grandfather but were never put on any register. In order to be able to rent it, Neoenergia helped him regulate it. “It’s been georeferenced and now it’s registered,” he says. The same happened to another 140 residents who live in this park, which supplies clean energy to the Brazilian national system.
For his part, Sánchez Galán, President of Iberdrola, explained that the company’s investment rate in Brazil is around 2,000 million euros per year. And that he intends to provide another 6,000 or 7,000 million by 2025. He also detailed that the company will participate in two new transmission line auctions that the Lula board is preparing for June and October.
The head of the Spanish electricity company is positive about the prospects for Latin America’s largest economy in this third term of the leader of the left in Brazil, who heads a wide-ranging government and was president between 2003 and 2010. Inflation control – about 5% – is one of the Spanish executive’s strengths in Brazil “when half the world has inflation problems,” according to the Spanish executive.
The second positive aspect he sees in Brazil “is that President Lula’s government, as in its first phase, will do everything possible to maintain macroeconomic stability.” Galán met with Finance Minister Fernando Haddad in Brasilia on Tuesday, who is preparing a new spending control system and tax reform. The minister explained to him that he “didn’t intend to collect more, but to collect better”. “I think it encourages us to have the stability that the country needs at all levels,” stressed the Spanish executive.
Neoenergia’s activities in Brazil cover all phases of the business: generation, transmission, distribution and commercialization. It’s a company heavily biased toward renewable energy, as the sum of five gigawatts of installed capacity across hydro, wind, and solar makes up 90% of its operations. Last year it made a profit of 4.7 billion reais (almost 830 million euros, 890 million dollars).
The ceremony was also attended by several ministers and the governor of Paraíba, Lula’s wife, Janja da Silva, thanks to which the President included feminism in his speech. The allusions to women and the promises of promoting them were constant in his speeches. Galán stressed his pride in the 500 electricians already working in his Brazilian subsidiary and the 200 that the company is training.
Follow all information from Business And Business on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter
Five Day Program
The most important economic dates of the day, with the keys and context to understand their scope.
RECEIVE IT IN YOUR MAIL