ANACE criticizes lack of penalty for gold rush generators

ANACE (National Association of Energy Consumers) criticized the decision of ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency) which forgave the agents of the “gold rush” from paying penalties resulting from non-compliance with obligations related to the CUST (Transmission System Use Contract).

For the entity, the ANEEL was very generous with the entrepreneurs who assumed the risks of their projects and did not make them viable. “The investors knew about the risks of the generation projects and the costs they would have to bear even if they gave up on their development, but in practice they were not held accountable. Everything ended up in a mess, with no cost or consequences for the system, involving other agents and users”, says the CEO of ANACE, Carlos Faria.

Last Thursday (13), the Normative Resolution was published ANEEL No. 1065/23, which deals with the exceptional mechanism for the treatment of generation concessions. The agency will allow concessions to be revoked and the respective CUSTs terminated without charging fines (36 months of the Transmission System Usage Fee).

To participate, the agent simply needs to have no EUST (Transmission System Usage Charges) debts with the transmitters, not be committed to contracts in the ACR (Regulated Contracting Environment), not have debts with sectoral charges and waive any legal discussion related to the CUSTs celebrated.

Agents have until July 28 to join the mechanism. In total, the ANEEL estimates a take-up of at least 11,78 GW, which will result in the release of the flow margin in the energy transmission system for projects that will actually come into operation.

A ANEEL It will also allow for the regularization of projects whose implementation deadlines are delayed, but which are viable for completion.

In these cases, the ANEEL will postpone the start of the EUST collection for up to 36 months from the publication of RN 1.065/23, upon deposit of financial guarantees. Those with overdue EUST payments may pay in 12 installments, limited to the billing cycle in effect at the time the collection begins.

It is worth remembering that the problem was caused by the race for grants and connections to the National Interconnected System to guarantee 50% discounts on Tariffs for Use of the Transmission and Distribution System (TUST/TUSD).

This benefit to renewable sources was extinguished with the publication of Law 14.20/2021. But the law opened a one-year window (March 2021 to March 2022), which generated an accumulation of 108 GW of granted installed capacity that was not yet in operation by the end of March 2023.

A ANEEL calculated that the occupied flow margin amounts to 39,9 GW, of which 13,1 GW are under construction and 26,2 GW have not yet started construction.

ANACE, despite agreeing that it was necessary to seek alternatives to solve the problem, considering that the gold rush or concessions were motivated by a series of movements with Congress and the Executive in defense of specific interests, understands that the An appropriate solution would lie in a combination of measures that would allow for the amicable termination of grants and Transmission System Use Contracts, with the provision of a discount, and not forgiveness, applicable to the resulting penalties, including the execution of the guarantees regularly presented and the waiver of any legal dispute. In this way, non-compliance with committed obligations would not go unpunished and would serve as an example for new ventures.