According to his estimates, the country’s natural and climatic conditions allow putting into operation 700 GW of the offshore WPPs, which is four times as much as the installed capacity of all the Brazilian power plants.
“We don’t have the internal demand to consume all that. So we’re looking at developing it as an industry that will export climate solutions,” Freiro is quoted by The Global. The Ministry of Natural Resources expects commissioning of the first capacities of the offshore WPPs in about five years after the tender is held. Anticipating it, the government has created a working team developing the rules for the companies-potential participants.
The key role in Brazil’s power industry belongs to hydropower plants (HPP): in 2020, they accounted for 64 percent of power generation, and all the other renewable sources (RES) accounted for 19 percent (with a 2 percent share of nuclear power plants and 10 percent of diesel, gas and coal plants) according to the BP World Energy Review. The installed capacity of the renewable power plants in Brazil is 159.9 GW, according to the estimates of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA): more than 85 percent of this capacity comes from HPPs (104.9 GW), solar panels (13.1 GW) and wind turbines (21.1 GW). However, 100 percent of the wind power capacity accounts for the onshore WPPs, which puts Brazil among the other countries in Latin America where not a single megawatt of offshore WPPs was put into operation by the end of 2021.
The WPP construction is not the only energy project to be implemented near the coast of Brazil in the coming years. The inner Atlantic shelf will become one of the global engines of oil production growth due to development of pre-salt oil fields, including Buzios, Sepia and Mero. Brazil will increase production from the current 2.9 million barrels per day (b/d) to 5 million b/d in 2030 as says S&P Global Platts.
