The president of Iberdrola, Ignacio Galán, promised yesterday with the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to invest 30,000 million reais – some 5,300 million euros – in the next three years in the country, to continue developing new projects renewables and networks, as well as making the most of the opportunities offered by technologies such as offshore wind or green hydrogen.
"Iberdrola will be a faithful ally in the country's energy transition," Galán told Lula during a joint visit to the Neoenergia Renewable Energy Complex.
Iberdrola's subsidiary in Brazil has launched wind and solar power generation in the country for the first time, thanks to the Chafariz wind farm and the Luzia photovoltaic plant. "Hybridization allows more efficient management of the two renewable sources, a reduction in costs and a better use of all potential, including the transmission system," explained Iberdrola.
The development of the project has involved an investment of 630 million euros, will allow the supply of clean energy to 1.3 million homes and will prevent the emission of more than 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
The facility is made up of 15 wind farms that have a total of 136 wind turbines (with an installed capacity of 471.2 MW) and two Neoenergia Luzia solar plants, with 228,000 panels and an installed capacity of 149.2 MW.
The construction of this energy complex has had the participation of 180 people who received more than 680 hours of classes to train as masons, carpenters and blacksmiths. Another 150 people were also trained to work on the assembly of metal structures for solar panels. Of the more than 3,600 direct and indirect jobs that have been created, 40% have been covered by local workers, according to data provided by the company.
“We started in Brazil 20 years ago and today we are more than a hundred companies that operate in all segments of the Brazilian electricity sector and serve almost 40 million people with a total of 16,000 employees. Iberdrola and Neoenergia will continue to be faithful allies of Brazil”, recalled Galán.
The subsidiary of the Spanish group has been operating in Brazil since 1997. Its businesses are divided into the areas of generation, transmission, distribution and marketing. Its distributors serve more than 16 million customers, equivalent to a population of more than 37 million people.
Neoenergia has 5.1 gigawatts of installed generation capacity, of which 90% is renewable, and is implementing another 200 MW with the construction of new wind farms. In the network business, it has 2,500 km of lines in operation and 6,100 km under construction.
