Published in Official Diary of the Union today (26) presidential decree which provides for the use of rivers and the sea for the generation of wind energy. The idea is to take advantage of regions where the wind is more constant and at more intense speeds, to generate energy from a clean source in areas known as offshore.
Brazil has favorable characteristics for the installation and operation of this type of enterprise, thanks to the incidence of trade winds (subtropical, which blow in the direction of the equator) in much of its coast, especially in the Northeast Region. The dimensions of its coast (7,367 km) and of the maritime space under its jurisdiction (3.5 million km²) also favored.
By providing “on the assignment of use of physical spaces and the use of natural resources in inland waters under the Union’s domain, in the territorial sea, in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf for the generation of electric energy from an offshore enterprise”, Decree No. 10,946 defines how such procedures will be conducted.
The decree also provides guidelines on how and where assignment requests will be submitted, and what the entrepreneur must do to carry out the venture.
According to the decree, the assignment of use may be granted through two different procedures: Planned Assignment, which consists of offering prisms previously delimited by the Ministry of Mines and Energy to any interested parties; and Independent Assignment, which involves the assignment of required prisms on the initiative of those interested in exploring them.
“Once the assignment of use is obtained, it will be the contractual obligation of the entrepreneur to carry out the necessary studies to identify the energy potential offshore, and must meet the criteria and deadlines defined in a specific act of the MME”, informed the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic.
According to the secretariat, the decree seeks to “fill the gap identified by public institutions, entrepreneurs, specialists and organizations of a regulatory framework for the exploitation of electric potential. offshore in Brazil, especially related to issues of implementation and the concession model”.
The secretariat adds that the proposal was “the subject of numerous meetings and discussions between the Ministry of Mines and Energy and other actors during 2021”, in addition to being an old demand of the wind energy generation sector.
“The decree brings clarity to the mechanisms for assigning the use of areas in inland waters, in the territorial sea, dividing the procedures between the Secretariat for Coordination and Governance of Union Heritage (SPU) of the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Mines and Energy ( MME).”
Also according to the secretariat, the regulation is compatible with the transformations that the electric sector has been going through, “especially due to the evolution of the electric matrix, accompanying the modernization of electric energy generation technologies by renewable sources and with great capacity of power, characteristics important to meet the growth in demand”.
To “make the process less bureaucratic”, the decree provides for the possibility for the MME to delegate to the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel) “powers to sign the use assignment contracts and to carry out the necessary acts for their formalization”.
