Brazil's Energy Research Company (EPE) has just recently released its National Energy Balance Report (BEN 2012) which provides detailed analysis of the Brazilian energy sector. The report found that 88.8% of Brazil's electricity in 2011 came from renewable energy sources.
Wind power provided the largest contribution, with capacity up a massive 24.2% from 2011. This increase came as a result of the large amounts of money that were invested into wind energy projects throughout the year after wind became the cheapest form of low carbon electricity, even cheaper than natural gas.
Biomass energy from sugarcane actually contributed less in 2011 than 2010, but at 44.1% was still much higher than the world average of 13.3%.
The supply of energy produced domestically in 2011 rose 1.3% reaching 272.3 million tons of oil equivalent (TOE), whilst at the same time GDP grew by 2.7%. According to the Brazilian Secretariat of Social Communication this means that Brazil spent less energy to produce the same amount of goods and services.
The total energy consumption was up 2.6% from 2011 to 228.7 million TOE. This resembles a more stable balance between supply and consumption in 2011- 43.7 million TOE- compared to 2010, in when the difference was 45.4 million.
By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com More