It will be released next week public consultation that will deal with the renewal of three electricity distribution concessions, reported the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, during the panel “Investments in housing and energy infrastructure” at the Esfera Rio de Janeiro Seminar, held this Friday (16). At stake are theoncessions from Light (Rio de Janeiro), ENEL RJ and EDP Espírito Santo.
According to Silveira, the government is sensitive to the specificities of concessions in Rio de Janeiro, which has an average of technical losses (gaps and meter errors) well above the national average. “Here there are regions where Light is unable to measure. The mechanism for modernizing this measurement has already been tried and failed.”
For the minister, one cannot treat “different people equally”. “We will have to be very careful so that we carry out a process that will ensure peace of mind for consumers in the country. And it is clear that we have to be careful not to commit injustices.”
In 2025, the concession for EDP expires, and in 2026 for Light and Enel. All companies have already requested renewal.
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The minister also spoke about the high energy tariff for consumers in the captive market. According to him, subsidies for renewable energy, the opening of the free market and distributed generation increase the costs of consumers served by distributors.
“Not that we are against [the opening of the free market], I am completely in favor. But it happened very quickly and in a certain way unfairly. The subsidies for all these changes took these users away from the public service concessionaire, in this case the distributors. Large industry went to the free market, being able to purchase energy freely, self-production, distributed generation, and this was left to the regulated consumer, who is basically the middle class and the poor”, he concludes.
