After almost two weeks of waiting, PL 5829 (Bill no. 5829/2019) was once again included in the Senate's deliberation agenda and could be voted on by parliamentarians this Wednesday (8).
The document was initially scheduled to be voted on on November 25th, but ended up being postponed indefinitely.
The text aims to create the Legal Framework for GD (distributed generation) in Brazil, attributing to ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency) the responsibility to consider technical, environmental and social attributes in the calculation of energy compensation.
Authored by deputy Silas Câmara (Republicanos-AM), the The proposal was approved in the Chamber of Deputies on August 18 and had the absolute majority of votes, with 476 in favor, three against and three abstentions.
Since then, the document has remained in the Senate pending bureaucratic procedures.
On September 20, Senator Marcos Rogério (DEM-RO) was appointed as rapporteur for the project by the President of the House, Rodrigo Pacheco (DEM-MG). Almost two months later, the document was put on the agenda for voting.
To become law, the proposal must be approved by more than 50% of senators, without significant changes. If approved with changes, the matter will return to the Chamber for a new vote, this time, definitively,
Why was the initial vote postponed?
Analysis of the proposal in the Senate ended up being postponed due to Marcos Rogério's health reasons, who, at the last minute, had to absent himself from the vote. The unforeseen event frustrated the expectations of entities in the solar energy sector, who were waiting for the document to be approved.
For experts and entities in the Brazilian photovoltaic segment, the bill paves the way in the country for the democratization of solar energy. Gustavo Tegon, co-founder of Esfera Solar, assesses that it would be extremely important for government officials to approve the document as soon as possible. “This could prove to be a very important milestone for the regulation of the (solar) sector and for us to have greater legal security for the coming years in distributed generation,” he said.
Will PL 5829 be approved tomorrow?
In conversations with representatives of the sector, who regularly talk to some Brazilian senators, the Canal Solar found that the tendency is for the project to be approved with some changes and return to the Chamber for a final vote.
Roberto Caurim, CEO of Bluesun, believes that the changes will be small, but that, if any changes occur in the Senate that could harm the text, the Chamber of Deputies must apply political maneuvers to avoid losses to the sector.
“PL 5829, which was approved in the Chamber of Deputies, was very well received by us. The problem is that we will certainly have some changes in the Senate, because it is very difficult for a project to pass completely from one house to the other without any type of change,” he said.
Last week, in an exclusive interview with Canal Solar, federal deputy Lafayette de Andrada (Republicanos/MG), also believed in this same outcome. The parliamentarian worked as rapporteur for the text while the document was waiting to be voted on by the Chamber.
The federal deputy highlighted, however, that, even with a new vote, the text will be approved and sent for presidential sanction in 2021. “Returning to the Chamber, there is already an agreement for the text to be voted on immediately by the deputies. By the end of the year, we will have this project voted on, with its backbone maintained”, he guaranteed.
