High curtailment rates and the national grid operator frequently rejecting renewable power have prompted BlackRock-backed Atlas Renewable Energy, one of the biggest solar power producers in South America, to halt $1 billion in planned investment in Brazil, the company’s chief executive Carlos Barrera told Reuters on Wednesday.
“There’s at least … 1.5 gigawatts that we put on hold in Brazil, where we had planned to already start construction,” the executive told Reuters on the sidelines of the SNEC photovoltaic conference in Shanghai, one of the biggest global gatherings of the solar industry.
Atlas Renewable Energy, backed by BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), has become Latin America’s largest privately-owned renewables independent power producer (IPP) in less than a decade since it was founded.
Atlas Renewable Energy has one of the largest fleets of renewable energy projects in the Americas with an asset base of more than 8.4 gigawatts (GW), of which 3.6 GW are operational and 3.2 GW are in advanced development or construction stages. In Brazil, Atlas has 10 separate projects that are either operational or in various stages of development.
However, the curtailment rate in Brazil, due to transmission investments lagging capacity additions, is growing and becoming a crippling bottleneck to renewable energy expansion. Curtailment rates reached about 27% for solar in 2025, compared to 16% for wind, both much higher than the previous year, according to estimates by Rystad Energy.
In the current quarter, curtailment rates for Atlas’ operational projects were as high as 15%-25%, CEO Barrera told Reuters today.
Last month, Fitch Ratings said it expects Brazilian renewable energy projects to continue experiencing curtailment until 2030 when the Graça Aranha transmission line is expected to expand transfer capacity between the Northeast and Southeast regions.
“Curtailment in Brazil is driven by the substantial and rapid increase in share of intermittent renewables in the national grid and the lag in construction for transmission infrastructure and demand capable of absorbing continued capacity additions,” Fitch said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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