Development & Aid, Environment, Tierramerica

Energy Debate in Turbulent Waters

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 17 2004 (IPS) - Brazil is once again putting priority on hydroelectric dams, a strategy ecologists criticize because of its potentially high environmental and social costs. But officials promise strict prior evaluations.

To confront Brazil's growing energy demand, the government has called for the construction of more hydroelectric dams, which in the past have sparked protests by environmentalists and civil society groups.

But officials pledge that this time it will all be different.

Under way is a ''new model'' that Brasilia hopes will stimulate investment in hydroelectric plants that will be subject to strict assessments and with strategies to deal with all potential problems, Claudio Langone, executive secretary of the Environment Ministry, told Tierramérica.

Until now, the energy authorities approved big hydroelectric dam projects without much consideration for the social and environmental problems that would erupt afterwards.

The challenges would often drive up the costs of the original plans because they would paralyze work or require that reparations be paid to the affected communities.

Half of the major hydroelectric dams approved in Brazil — some of them still under construction — are blocked due to legal action, in most cases for the environmental impacts of the facilities.

MAB, the movement of people affected by the dam projects, estimates there are 300,000 families — or around one million people — in Brazil who have been displaced by the construction of dams and the filling of their reservoirs.

The organization is pushing for changes in the national energy policy, and rejects the mega-dams, saying ''34,000 square kilometers of fertile land have already been flooded,'' driving out thousands of farmers.

Langone maintains that the government's new approach, which insists on hydroelectric dam construction, ''is very positive on the environmental (and social) question,'' because it will attend to those matters with a stringent previous evaluation.

The new model entails environmental impact studies ''of an integral nature, by hydrographic basin'' or watershed, not project by project, as they were in the past.

This will allow experts to identify ''the points of greatest sustainability'' in each watershed, according to the official, and will open the way for planning for best utilization of natural resources with the fewest undesirable effects.

''The transition will be difficult'' because of the urgency in increasing energy supplies and the inherited concessions with environmental and legal problems, said Langone.

Ministry of Mining and Energy Dilma Rousseff said hydroelectric dams will remain ''the most important part of the Brazilian electrical system in the coming decades.''

That priority is welcome, said Emilio la Rovere, professor of energy planning at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, because it is more sustainable than natural gas-fired thermoelectric plants, which have returned to the fore with Brazil's emergency plans since the 2001 energy crisis.

In the opinion of Delcio Rodrigues, a researcher with the non-governmental organization Vitae Civiles, building hydroelectric dams ''is good on the one hand because it is a renewable source of energy, which tends to be cheaper over time.''

''But it isn't clear how the government will handle the question of the environmental and social effects,'' he said.

By putting emphasis on construction of hydroelectric dams, a Brazilian strategy presented at the International Conference for Renewable Energies held in Bonn in early June, the country abandoned its role as a world leader as a promoter of ''new'' renewable energy sources, says Rodrigues, a physicist specializing in energy.

Nevertheless, he recognizes that Brazil continues to make progress in that field, with its Incentive Program for Alternative Energy Sources.

The program's objective, in its first phase, is to add 3,300 megawatts to the national electrical grid by 2006, with the sources being, in equal parts, wind, biomass and small-scale hydroelectric plants.

But what is lacking, according to Rodrigues, is ''strategic thinking'' that defines for whom and for what sectors more electricity will be generated, in other words, which industries would be developed and supplied with cheaper energy.

His fear is that the new policy is limited to increasing supplies to ensure economic growth, with an attitude of ''development at any cost'' that does not take energy conservation into account.

Brazil is a unique and privileged country in terms of energy, blessed with the greatest flow of river water in the world and with the vast vegetation which produces biomass.

Of the country's energy-generating potential of 88 million kilowatts, 77 percent of capacity comes from hydroelectric plants — considered by some to be renewable and inexpensive.

But that availability of resources failed to prevent the country from suffering serious energy shortages in 2001, which were only resolved with eight months of rationing and incentives for energy conservation.

Now, the fear is that energy supplies will not keep up with economic growth. According to government figures, investment in the energy sector should be more than two billion dollars per year.

Failure to comprehend Brazil's unique energy situation led to mistakes, which triggered the 2001 crisis and challenge the current government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said Roberto Pereira d'Araujo, director of the non-governmental Institute for Strategic Development of the Electrical Sector, ILUMINA.

Hydroelectricity requires long-term plans because ''what we do today could affect 2008,'' and the Brazilian energy system is interconnected at the national level, because ''one company doesn't sell the energy it generates, but rather a portion of the energy available in the entire system,'' he said.

It is a ''natural monopoly'' situation in which greater productivity is achieved with a higher level of integration, D'Araujo said.

The privatizations and deregulations of the liberal reforms that took place in the 1990s, in addition to triggering the ''blackout'' of 2001, are blocking the integration that officials are trying to build today. That requires greater transparency and more skilled people in managing a complex system, he added.

Other negative factors yet to be dealt with are the high electrical rates in Brazil, among the highest in the world, and the fact that the country's advantages in natural resources ''are not being transferred to the consumers and the productive system,'' said the expert.