Good morning! Today, Big Center politicians pushing for a bill to boost expensive and polluting thermoelectric energy in Brazil. Ten years since the Truth Commission, and little has changed. A look at Brazil’s swollen gig economy.
Brazilian lawmakers want to finance pipelines with public money
Politicians from the “Big Center,” a group of mildly-conservative rentier parties supportive of President Jair Bolsonaro, have lobbied for a BRL 100 billion fund that would use money from pre-salt deepwater oil reserves to finance the construction of gas pipelines connecting thermal power plants across the country.
Why it matters. The bill — which could soon go to a House vote — would finance the construction of an additional 5,000 kilometers of pipelines.
Pros … Supporters of the fund say the Brazilian pipeline network has stagnated over the past 12 years and that a bigger network would bring energy security to more remote areas of Brazil.
- They also point out that the decree allowing the government to privatize Eletrobras, Brazil’s massive energy company, forces the government to purchase energy from thermal plants to be built in areas that lack pipelines.
- One industry executive calls the bill “a good solution for a terrible problem”...