Decree published by the Federal Government will increase energy bills in Brazil

The Federal Government published, this Friday (14), in the DOU (Official Gazette of the Union), the Decree 10.939 / 2022 which regulates mechanisms so that energy distributors can face the financial impacts caused by the water crisis in the Brazilian electricity sector. 

The document, therefore, creates the “Water Scarcity Account”, by the CCEE (Electric Energy Trading Chamber), with the aim of raising resources to cover the additional costs arising from the situation of water scarcity for public service concessionaires and permit holders. of electrical energy distribution. 

In other words, the measure, basically, forces Brazilian consumers to pay billion-dollar loans to help and compensate for the financial impacts caused by the water crisis on energy distributors.

The amount to be allocated to each of the companies will still be defined by ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency), but, according to investigation by journalist Ana Flor, from G1, o loan value could reach R$6 billion. 

In an interview with Canal Solar, Bernardo Marangon, director of the company Exata Energia, said that the new published decree presents similarities with the Covid Account, which, at the beginning of last year and this year, also allocated resources to concessionaires.

“We still don’t know what the impact [of this decree] will be, which will probably still be calculated. From a transfer point of view, it will be done in the same way as with the Covid Account. They will probably organize this financing from now on and, only later on, will we have access to the average percentage and the impact of this”, he said.

The professional also highlighted that the abundant use of thermoelectric plants last year generated high expenses for Brazil, meaning that the costs generated by these plants had to be amortized through debt. “A very high cost was generated [with the use of thermal plants], which if paid all at once would result in a very large impact on the energy tariff”, he highlighted. 

Provisional Measure

The decree approved this Friday is part of the Provisional Measure nº 1.078, published in December last year, which predicted that the resources collected through tariff charges would be used to cover the additional expenses that the electricity sector incurred in 2021, mainly due to the activation of all thermal generation plants in the country. 

According to the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, the MP made it possible to structure financial operations guaranteed by the CDE (Energy Development Account), in order to mitigate the effects of increased electricity generation costs on distributors and energy consumers. electrical energy.

To try to prevent consumers who migrated to the Free Contracting Environment from having to bear the additional costs borne by distributors, the MP planned to institute a tariff charge for cases of migration.

“The charge will be borne by all consumers served by the impacted distributors, except for the portion of deferrals, which will fall on the consumers of each distributor that obtains financing for this component”, explained the Secretariat. 

The Union claims that the new decree will guarantee “the health of the entire electrical system, in order to allow the rapid injection of resources into distributors”. At the same time, he adds, the aim is to make it possible for the additional costs observed in the generation of electricity to be passed on to consumers “smoothly and spread over time”.