Howard Geller
January 2000
Executive Summary
Total electricity consumption in Brazil grew from 38 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 1970 to 265 TWh in 1995, an average growth rate of about 8 percent per year. During 1995-98, electricity consumption rose 5 percent per year on average, leading to 307 TWh of total electricity use in 1998. Demand is growing most rapidly in the residential and commercial sectors. Electricity consumption per capita (2,242 kilowatt-hours [kWh] per year as of 1998) was about one-fifth of that in the United States.
The most recent Eletrobras decade plan estimates that electricity demand will continue to grow about 5 percent per year and will reach 494 TWh by 2007. If this forecast proves to be correct, around 35 gigawatts (GW) of additional installed capacity will be needed by 2007. Adding this amount of new capacity in less than a decade will be difficult and expensive. Also, it would result in substantial adverse environmental impacts from fossil fuel power plant emissions along with flooding caused by new hydro power plants. On the other hand, if demand continues to grow 5 percent per year and supply is not expanded by this amount, power shortages will occur. In fact the risk of black-outs and power shortages is increasing because the expansion of generating capacity has not kept up with demand growth in recent years. Improving the efficiency with which electricity is used in Brazil can help to ameliorate all of these problems.
This report describes the efforts undertaken to stimulate greater efficiency in the use of electricity, the results achieved, and strategies for achieving market transformation in Brazil. Market transformation means reducing barriers so that cost-effective energy efficiency measures are widely and routinely sold and used. Special attention is devoted to efforts to improve the efficiency of three end-uses—lighting, refrigerators, and motors.
33 pp., 2000, $14.00, I001
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