South-Ameirca's biggest city running on the breeze

Brazil's economy is growing fast, and it is expected to need an increase of 50% in power generation capacity over the next decade. Currently, the country gets quite a lot of its electricity from hydro, but because it is becoming more reluctant to build new dams on its numerous rivers, it is now turning to another plentiful source of energy: Wind power. The country doesn't have much of it right now, but a big wind turbine boom seems to be starting.

Large parts of Brazil are so windy - both with high and consistent wind speeds - that this is a perfect fit. The very same wind turbines end up producing more kWhs of clean power than in other, less windy parts of the world. The current goal is to generate 10% of the country's electricity from the wind by 2021, or enough to pretty much power Sao Paula, South-America's largest city with 11 million people (almost 20 million in the metro area).

Flickr/CC BY 2.0

“Wind is the perfect complement for the hydro base that we have in Brazil,” said Mathias Becker, president of Renova Energia, a São Paulo wind energy company founded 12 years ago with $5,000 and now worth nearly $1.5 billion. “When it rains, we don’t have wind. When the wind blows, there is no rain.”

The Washington Post has a great video here about wind power in Brazil. If you want to know more, I recommend you check it out.

Via Washington Post