SAO PAULO (Reuters)-A change in the rules for granting tariff benefits to renewable generation plants on Tuesday, an incentive that helped make these projects economically more attractive but has been burdening the electricity bill of consumers in recent years.
The approved amendment comes to comply with the Federal Court of Audit (TCU), which pointed out in 2023 that entrepreneurs had been using “subterfuge” to circumvent the limits of the legislation and obtain subsidies, which add up billions of reais.
The so -called “encouraged energy” plants of wind, solar and biomass sources of up to 300 megawatts (MW) are entitled to discounts of at least 50% in the rates of use of power transmission and distribution systems.
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According to the TCU, several enterprises that surpassed this power were artificially fractional, in the requests for granting Aneel, to fit the rules of the discount.
Aneel has now made the rules adapt to ensure that only enterprises of up to 300 MW of injected power are entitled to the tariff benefit.
The regulatory body began to adopt in the grants the concept of “generation complex”, which considers both infrastructure sharing (point of connection to the electricity network) by the plants and a corporate evaluation of their owners. The electricity chamber (CCEE) will be responsible for ascertaining the injected power of the complexes, aiming to ascertain the limit of up to 300 MW.
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These rules must reach about 150 grants of generation that were pending waiting for the new regulation. The change will not be applied retroactively, so as not to create legal insecurity for already operational enterprises.
Discounts on encouraged energy sources add billionaire values and represent the main allowance paid by consumers in the electricity bill. In 2025 alone, until September, these discounts already cost R $ 10.3 billion to consumers, almost a third of the total subsidies paid in the period, according to Aneel’s subsidiometer tool.
(By Letícia Fucuchima)
