Por: Armindo Teodósio, Thiago Silva, Andressa Nunes, Melina Gomes

Several activities that make up contemporary human life, whether in central societies with concentrated wealth or in peripheral regions, are compromised without access to quality electricity. For some, it is now a matter of renewing the energy matrix that makes our societies operate, due to the enormous challenges that humanity faces in the age of climate change. For others, it is a matter of universalizing access to electricity as a central element of quality of life within the contemporary way of life that we replicate in different regions of the planet. One pursuit does not exclude the other. When they converge, we are moving towards initiatives that address climate change within what we call a just transition, climate justice and/or environmental anti-racism. Our article addresses these challenges in the Brazilian context.

Discussing energy from the Brazilian perspective, means discussing the continuity of energy services. Issues related to the availability and quality of electricity are daily concerns for the Brazilian people in different regions of the country. If, until a few years ago, the difficulty of accessing energy and the frequent interruption of its supply were a major problem for peripheral communities throughout our territory, the energy crisis is currently manifesting itself in the city with the largest GDP in the country, the city of São Paulo, which struggles with frequent and prolonged power outages due to extreme climate events. We need to advance both in the universalization of access to energy in our country and in the provision of energy security, in addition to further advancing the supply from less polluting matrices and those that generate less negative impacts on the environment.

One of the positive aspects of the Brazilian energy matrix is ​​that, when compared to other nations, it places us in a prominent position in terms of lower impacts on the environment. However, environmental complexity requires us to be increasingly critical and demanding with the solutions we seek. This is also evident in the supply of electricity. An example of this point is the debate and weighing of the Belo Monte alternative as a strategy to provide electricity to the North region and to support energy generation in the country. Even in a less polluting and degrading matrix, that derived from hydroelectric plants, when Belo Monte is brought into the debate, nothing becomes evident or clear in terms of sustainability. On the contrary, the disservice to sustainability becomes evident in a powerful way.

In the Brazilian context, discussing the quality of energy for homes and families is not a new topic. Nor is the discussion about what the future of energy will be like for transportation, for instance, which is the sector which is one of the sectors that consumes the most energy in Brazil and in the world – about 28% of all the energy we produce. What is relatively new are the forms of energy consumption that will be available in the face of population growth and consumption challenges.

An interesting point is that talking about the future of energy is not only about how large energy concessionaires will guarantee the uninterrupted supply for municipalities, but also about discussing small-scale renewable energy production that can supply rural areas. It is about treating the service provided by large distributors as complementary and not just exclusive. It is about pointing out, perceiving and following possible paths to guarantee electricity consumption for our families.

In different parts of the world, movements based on so-called Community-Based Renewable Energy, with different local governance arrangements, have emerged. These experiences seek to materialize in the daily lives of communities and cities the access to and generation of energy on a sustainable basis, transforming the general understanding of societies about strategies for a transition towards sustainable ways of life. The governance of these projects, as a rule, activates local social capital as an asset for raising awareness, engaging and acting on the part of citizens in creating local conditions for access, generation, and distribution of energy on a sustainable basis.

These experiences serve as inspiration for us to think about and fight for community and grassroots strategies to expand the  access, generation and distribution of energy on a sustainable basis  in Brazil. By studying these experiences, we can also learn and try to overcome important challenges related to cultural and social barriers, which increase when we talk about effectively building successful community-based renewable energy experiences in the country. These challenges are linked to gender, ethnic-racial issues and the vulnerability of communities located on the periphery of large centers that concentrate infrastructure, political and economic power and quality of life in the territories. Thinking about the expansion of renewable energy without considering inequalities, as well as the fallacies and myths behind some supposedly sustainable proposals for energy generation, is to build alternatives that will further restrict access to quality energy and deconstruct the foundations for a transition towards sustainability.

In countries like Brazil, marked by the important and rich presence of black people in the social, cultural, political and economic history of the nation, but unfortunately in a condition of enslavement, exploitation, degradation, silencing and erasure of their identities and cultures, inequalities in access to energy, especially the energy produced on a sustainable basis, are abysmal. Proof of this finding is that the lack of access to quality energy in the country is marked by race, territoriality and gender: it is recurrently present in quilombola territories, indigenous territories and in urban and rural spaces with a prevalence of black communities.

Figure 1 Quilombola Territory in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Source: Authors Archive.

Figure 2 Indigenous Territory in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Source: Authors Archive.

Finally, in the rush to achieve energy transition, in which policies, programs and projects reorder the allocation of economic resources and generate an increase in political and social capital, especially in terms of legitimizing economic and productive initiatives, there is misinformation and ignorance about the effective contribution to sustainability in expanding, for example, the fleet of electric cars and waste incineration. There are important issues to be addressed and debates about “greenwashing” when the term energy recovery is adopted to try to give a sustainable character to large-scale waste incineration activities, which could and should be reinserted into the economy through more and better circular economy strategies. All of this affects the public debate on an effectively renewable and sustainable energy production system, making it even more complex and “swampy”.

In the Brazilian context, there is a lack of a more robust, effective and widely disseminated strategy for the design, implementation and evaluation of public energy policies based on community-based action and the effective promotion of sustainability, beyond the false, unsustainable and ecologically incorrect solutions of promoting renewable energy. There is also a lack of greater sensitivity and reorientation of the business sector towards sustainable energy. It is necessary to create space to bring together the city’s initiatives, draw the attention of city halls and state and federal governments to the issue, and invite the population to access consistent information on the contribution (or not) of the range of energies that are said to be renewable. Discussing the future of energy means thinking about equality in terms of just economic and social development. It is preparing the population for the challenges that lie ahead and that will soon have an impact  in contexts in which disasters and catastrophes tend to be more frequent due to climate change.

Armindo Teodósio (Téo), Thiago Silva, Andressa Nunes, Melina Gomes are Researchers-Extension Workers of the Knowledge and Innovations for Sustainability Extension Program (SABIÁS). They belong to the Center for Research in Ethics and Social Management (NUPEGS), of the Graduate Program in Administration, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais. The author Thiago Silva is a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and his research contemplates possibilities and risks in community-based renewable energies in Brazil. The authors would like to thank the research for funding and the approval of research grants from the Minas Gerais Research Foundation (FAPEMIG) and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). 

E-mail: thiago.silva@academico.ufpb.br