Regulatory Agency recommends to the Ministry of Mines and Energy that companies must pay fines before requesting the extension
The (National Electric Energy Agency) defined this Thursday (25.FEV.2025) as will be the contracts for energy distributors renew their concessions for another 30 years. Now, the draft will be sent to the Ministry of Mines and Energy that should then ratify the rules for companies to express whether or not they are interested in the extensions of their respective concessions.
The government can still make changes to Aneel’s draft, but the ministry is tend to follow the agency’s recommendations. Despite this history, the distributors still trust a change proposed by the rapporteur of the process, director Agnes da Costa. In her winning vote, the director defined that companies interested in expressing the renewal must resign actions that suspended fines imposed by Aneel. The total amount calculated by the agency in fines suspended by the court is $ 943 million.
In conversation with journalists, the president of Abradee (Brazilian Association of Electricity Distributors), Marcos Madureira, said he was pleased with the completion of the draft after months of deliberation, but that the theme of the resignation of fines is controversial and not must prosper. According to the executive, the obligation to give up legal disputes to sign the contract can lead to even more legal insecurity in the Brazilian electricity sector.
“We understand that it does not have legal reasons that allow the requirement that companies will pay fines that are still under discussion as a requirement factor so that they can sign the contract. Our understanding is that the ministry should analyze from this perspective, because it did not come as a ministry guideline ”said Madureira. “This brings insecurity to anyone involved in a process like this”.
Aneel’s draft was the most anticipated step to guide renovations. The agency has been overlooked on the subject since the publication of Decree 12,068 of 2024 of the Ministry of Mines and Energy. This is the decree (PDF – 256 kb).
It was about 6 hours of discussion to define the draft contractual additive that will allow early renewals. Director Fernando Mosna opened a divergence and asked the draft to be applied only to the renewal of EDP in Espírito Santo, as the concession wins in 2025, and a new public consultation was opened to improve the draft. By 3 votes to 2 the proposal of Agnes was winning. This is the vote (PDF – 2 MB).
In all, 20 energy distributors will end their concession contracts by 2031. Initially companies could request renewal 36 months before the end of the contract, but as 3 concessions end before this period – EDP in Espírito Santo, Enel in Rio de Janeiro and Light in Rio de Janeiro – These companies have 30 days from the publication of the draft to renew interest in extending the contract.
Here are the next steps for distributors to renew their contracts:
- Publication of the draft ADDITIVE TERM TO THE CONCESSION CONTRACT;
- Distributors then have 30 days to submit to Aneel the request for anticipation of the renewal;
- Submitted the request, Aneel has 60 days to send recommendation to the Ministry of Mines and Energy with the evaluation regarding compliance with technical and economic and financial indicators;
- Received Aneel’s recommendation, the ministry has 30 days to decide and call for signing the contract;
- Finally, the distributors have 60 days, counted from the call, to sign the additives to the new concession contracts.
