88.8% of Brazilian Electricity in 2011 from Renewable Sources

 
Preliminary data from the National Energy Balance Report (BEN 2012) from Brazil’s Energy Research Company (EPE) shows that a whopping 88.8% of Brazil’s supplied electricity in 2011 came from renewable energy sources.

Wind power increased a whopping 24.2% in 2011. This was expected a bit, given that it became clear near the middle of 2011 that wind power was the cheapest form of new electricity available, even cheaper than natural gas, and a lot of money was going into wind power projects in the country.

Electricity from sugarcane biomass actually decreased, but it remained at a high level (44.1%), far above the world average of 13.3%.

Below is a little more info from the Brazilian Secretariat of Social Communication (SECOM):

The table below shows that the domestic supply of energy (total energy defendant in the country) in 2011 rose 1.3 percent over 2010, reaching 272.3 million tons of oil equivalent (TOE). At the same time, Gross Domestic Product expanded 2.7 percent, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The lower growth in demand for energy compared to GDP indicates that Brazil spent less energy to produce the same amount of goods and services. The demand energy per capita stood at 1.41 TOE in 2011, increasing approximately 0.5 percent since 2011.

Total energy consumption in Brazil, by both individuals and companies, increased by 2.6 percent over the previous year,  with a corresponding domestic supply of 228.7 million TOE in 2011. This resembles a more stable balance between supply and consumption in 2011– 43.7 million TOE— compared to 2010, in which the TOE was 45.4 million.

The preliminary BEN 2012 results are available at www.ben.epe.gov.br.