Solar panels and batteries are changing life in Brazil's Amazon

BRAZIL'S Amazon teems with plant and animal life and is critical to the health of the planet as a storehouse of carbon dioxide.

- By FABIANO MAISONNAVE

The nation also has the cleanest national grid among G20 countries, thanks to abundant hydropower, much of it originating in the Amazon.But many Amazonian communities aren’t connected to the grid. In remote areas with no roads, transmission lines are difficult to build and maintain. Instead, they depend on polluting diesel fuel for electricity.

Diesel, transported by boat, is burned by about 160 local thermal plants and thousands of generators scattered around the rainforest. Brazil’s government spends roughly $2.4 billion in subsidies per year to support this system, according to the National Electric Energy Agency.

Now, solar panels and lithium batteries are beginning to transform the region, supplementing or replacing diesel altogether.

“We used to depend on diesel and lamps,” said Waldemir da Silva, a leader in the Trés Unidos Indigenous community of about 40 families at the mouth of the Cuieiras River, located about 45 miles (72 kilometers) from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, and accessible only by boat. “Today we have electricity 24 hours a day, without noise or smoke.”

The shift is being driven by a mix of federal policy, falling technology costs and philanthropic initiatives to build microgrids.

Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy plans to add solar and batteries to diesel plants around the Amazon. Last year it approved an initial set of 29 projects, which together will serve 650,000 people and avoid 800,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2036, according to official estimates. Subsidy savings are projected to reach about $171 million.