What’s holding back Brazil’s offshore wind generation bill?

A bill regulating offshore wind generation in Brazil is due for debate in the full senate in the coming week, alongside a bill creating a program to accelerate the energy transition.

The offshore wind bill, which was authored by senator Jean Paul Prates – former CEO of federal oil giant Petrobras – has been progressing slowly through congress, mainly due to the inclusion in the text of so-called jabutis, i.e. matters not related to the subject.

During its approval in the lower house, issues relating to the contracting of natural gas and coal-fired plants in backup capacity auctions planned by the federal government were added, for example.

“These inclusions displeased the ministries of finance and mines and energy, which were responsible for articulating the text relating to offshore wind farms,” Thiago Silva, from Vieira Rezende law firm, told BNamericas.

Silva said the content of the bill is of high technical quality and in line with global best practices.

In recent weeks, the executive branch and the senate have been at odds with each other over the bill. The government wants to remove content not related to offshore wind power, while the senate's rapporteur, senator Weverton Rocha, prefers to approve the bill with all the jabutis, leaving it up to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to decide whether to sanction or veto those parts.

Rocha made a new change to the text regarding natural gas and coal-fired power plants. If approved with this change, the bill will return to the lower house, causing yet another delay.

Silva said there will be no auctions for the transfer of areas for offshore wind potential until the bill is approved.

But companies that already have access to maritime areas due to other contracts (such as oil and gas exploration and production contracts) can start mapping offshore wind potential.

“The survey of energy potential is a mandatory stage in any onshore or offshore wind project, and the amount of electricity to be sold by these companies, the so-called physical guarantee, depends on this monitoring and proof stage,” said the lawyer.

As part of this strategy, Petrobras, for example, launched the Bravo buoys to map the energy potential off the coast of Rio Grande do Norte state.

According to Silva, obtaining this information now will allow companies, once they have contracts for offshore wind power generation, to start production before companies that will only start mapping after obtaining contracts under the terms of the bill.

Petrobras is among several companies – including fellow oil producers such as Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies – that have submitted a total of 234GW in offshore wind projects to regulator Ibama for environmental review.