Government will give discount to families who reduce energy consumption

The Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, said in a press conference that Brazil will offer discounts on electricity bills for residential consumers who save electricity starting September 1st. The Ministry is expected to release more details about how the measure will work early next week. The proposal, which is part of the Federal Government's voluntary reduction program, aims to reduce energy demand and avoid the risk of blackouts.

The country is currently experiencing its worst water crisis in 91 years, due to the historic drought that has hit the main reservoirs in the Southeast and Central-West regions. Together, these two regions account for more than 70% of the country's hydroelectric power generation. With no water in the reservoirs, the Federal Government had to take measures to avoid the need for rationing, such as purchasing energy from neighboring countries and activating thermal power plants, which, in addition to being more polluting, have also increased the cost of Brazilian families' electricity bills. The value will be even higher in 2022.

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Albuquerque also revealed that the prospects for rain until October are not encouraging. “The prospects for the future that we have so far, in terms of precipitation until the end of the dry period, are not good and remain with the prospect of lower precipitation,” he said.

The Ministry has been warning about the problem of shortages for at least three months. At the end of July, the minister spoke on national radio and television asking the population to make conscious use of water and electricity.

The minister also highlighted that the government monitors the electricity sector 24 hours a day and that, this week, extraordinary meetings were held with the CMSE (Electric Sector Monitoring Committee) and the CREG (Chamber of Exceptional Rules for Hydropower Management). “We identified that the months of July and August were the worst months in the historical series of monitoring of our electricity sector (…) This clearly has consequences for the entire management of our system,” he said.

Public agencies

This Wednesday (25), the MME also issued a decree to reduce energy consumption in public buildings between September 1st of this year and April 1st, 2022. According to the document, the forecast is for a drop in energy consumption in public administration of 10% to 20% compared to the average consumed in the same period between 2018 and 2019. To carry out the control, it was agreed that the bodies and entities will publish consumption on the Internet so that the comparison with the established period can be monitored by consumers.

Industry

Another sector that also gained rules to reduce energy demand were free market industries – those that buy energy directly from the generator or trader, without going through the distributor. The idea is to pay, through a system similar to that of auctions, for the energy that companies manage to save, until April 30, 2022, shifting this consumption to a time that puts less pressure on the SIN (National Interconnected System).

The published changes also provide that the minimum amount to be offered for reduction will be 5 MW and that consumers will be able to organize themselves and act as aggregators, reducing transaction costs. In the coming days, the ONS (National Electric System Operator) and the CCEE (Electric Energy Trading Chamber) will release the guidelines and documents so that companies can participate in the voluntary offer to reduce energy demand.