Equinor, Scatec and Hydro Rein have started commercial operations at their 531MW Mendubim solar project in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte.
The project is a joint venture between the three companies, an oil and gas firm, a renewable power company and a subsidiary of Norsk Hydro, all headquartered in Norway and each of which holds a 30% stake in the project. The companies first announced the project in 2020 and first aimed to commission the plant in late 2023 as they sought to expand their international renewable power portfolio.
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“Launching a major new solar plant in Brazil in partnership with Scatec and Hydro Rein is an important achievement,” said Olav Kolbeinstveit, senior vice president for onshore and markets within renewables at Equinor.
“By investing in renewable energy, we are supporting Brazil’s ambitions towards a diverse energy mix and helping to meet the expected power demand growth in the country.”
Expanding Brazil’s renewables portfolio
Brazil has already made a number of clean energy commitments, including aiming to expand the contribution of non-hydropower renewables to its energy mix from 15% in 2015 to 23% by 2030. Last year, the government also joined around 100 countries in pledging to triple the world’s renewable energy output by the end of the decade, and part of the Mendubim project’s work will involve the decarbonisation of a leading aluminium refinery in the country.
The project’s developers have signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Alunorte, an aluminium refinery in the country owned by Norsk Hydro and Swiss mining giant Glencore, to acquire 60% of the power produced by the Mendubim project. The remainder of the power produced at the project will be sold to the Brazilian market.
The Alunorte refinery has an annual production capacity of around 6.3 million tons per year, so the owners of both Alunorte and Mendubim will be hopeful that the deal will cut down on the Brazilian industry’s carbon emissions.
“We have a very robust roadmap to decarboniaation to produce green alumina in [the] Alunorte refinery, which will bring us to be one of the lowest carbon emitting refineries in the world by 2030 and reach zero emissions by 2040,” said Carlos Neves, vice president operations at Alunorte, which owns the remaining 10% stake in the Mendubim project.
“With this project we reinforce [Norsk] Hydro’s commitment to deliver zero-carbon aluminium products to customers, and Alunorte is an important enabler of the overall ambition of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
The news follows Engie’s acquisition of a 545MWac solar portfolio in Brazil, as interest grows in the Brazilian utility-scale solar sector.