Tapajos battle goes on

Till the end of the year, the Federal Government still hopes to open the bidding of São Luis do Tapajos hydroelectric power plant, in the western area of the state of Pará, but it faces the resistance of indigenous tribes located in the region.

The bid to build the power plant of São Luis do Tapajos, located in the basin of Tapajos River and considered the most important plant of the Amazonian hydroelectric complex was postponed some times. The last change in the bid date occurred in last September, when it was moved to this year. After a long licensing process, the government faces the resistance of the indigenous group Mundukuru that claims for land areas that will be flooded due to the construction of the plant. The government intends to carry out the auction of the plant (generating capacity of 8040 MW) in 2015.

The pressure is justified. If we consider only the plants fully located in Brazilian territory, São Luiz do Tapajos will be the third largest Brazilian hydroelectric power plant, only smaller than Belo Monte (11233 MW) and Tucurui (8370 MW). The plant of Itaipu has a higher capacity (14000 MW) but is divided between Brazil and Paraguay.

The Study of Environmental Impact of São Luiz do Tapajos Hydroelectric Power Plant—the first of the five plants planned for the region—was finished and delivered to the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources (Ibama) at the end of 2014. The plants of São Luiz do Tapajos, Jatoba, Jamanxim, Cachoeira do Caí and Cachoeira dos Patos will reach a total of 10,682 MW to be added to the national capacity of power generation. The Group of Study Tapajos—coordinated by Eletrobras and having the participation of Eletronorte, GDF Suez, Cemig and Camargo Correa—is responsible by the studies of environmental and engineering feasibility of the hydroelectric plants of São Luiz do Tapajos and Jatoba.

However, the profile of the plants registered for the next power auction, scheduled for April 30, confirms the difficulties faced by the government to accelerate its projects for power plants in the Amazonian region. The Empresa de Pesquisa Energética (EPE) received 91 projects of new plants for the “A-5” auction, a type of auction used to contract projects that will start power generation five years from now. From this total, only seven are hydroelectric plants and none of them are located in the Amazon.

If the seven plants would be contracted in April—what is not likely to occur—the auction would have a total of only 649 megawatts (MW) of power generation, the capacity of just one turbine of Belo Monte, the huge plant that is being built in the Xingu River, in the State of Pará.

Once a year, EPE prepares the so-called Ten-year Plan of Energy, a document that lists the power projects that will start to operate in the next ten years. Till two years ago, this plan contained at least seven large hydroelectric plants in the Amazonian region, with a total capacity above 13,000 MW to be made feasible till 2020.

In the ten-year plan of this year only the plant of São Luiz do Tapajos remained. With no environmental licenses, it was out of April’s auction. "We included in the auction the projects that have real condition of feasibility, even considering that only Itaocara has the environmental licenses at this moment ", said Maurício Tolmasquim, president of EPE.