Brazil's hydroelectric dam boom is bringing tensions
as well as energy

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People are having to leave their homes, villages are being submerged, and worries are being expressed about damage to the biodiverse Amazon forest.

When it is completed in 2015, the Jirau hydroelectric dam will span 8km across the Madeira river and feature more giant turbines than any other dam in the world. Then there are the power lines, draped along 2,250km of forests and fields to carry electricity to Brazil's urban nerve centre, São Paulo.
Still, it won't be enough. The dam and the Santo Antonio complex that is being built a few kilometres downstream will provide just 5% of what government energy planners say the country will need in the next 10 years. So Brazil is building many more dams, courting controversy by locating the vast majority in the world's largest and most biodiverse forest.
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"The investment to build these plants is very high, and they are to be put in a region which is an icon for environmental preservation, the Amazon," said Paulo Domingues, energy planning director for the ministry of mines and energy. "So that has worldwide repercussions."
Between now and 2021, the energy ministry's building schedule will be feverish: Brazilian companies and foreign conglomerates will put up 34 sizeable dams in an effort to increase the country's capacity to produce energy by more than 50%.The Brazil projects have received less attention than China's dam-building spree, which has plugged up canyons and bankrolled hydroelectric projects far from Asia.
But Brazil is undertaking one of the world's largest public works projects, one that will cost more than $150bn, and harness the force of this continent's great rivers. The objective is to help the country of 199 million achieve what Brazilian leaders call its destiny: becoming a modern, efficient world-class economy with an ample supply of energy for office towers, assembly lines, refineries and iron works. "Brazil is a country that's growing, developing, and it needs energy," said Eduardo de Melo Pinto, president of Santo Antonio Energia. "And the potential in energy production in Brazil is located, for the most part, in Amazonia. And that's why this is important for this project to be developed."
Jirau, Santo Antonio and other projects, however, have generated more tension than electricity, raising questions that range from their environmental impact to whether future generations will be saddled with gigantic debt. Read on ...


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