Cela: Renewable financing advances in 2025, but does not surpass peak
A study carried out by Cela (Clean Energy Latin America), a company specializing in financial advisory and strategic consultancy for the energy transition sector, points out that financing for renewable sources has grown, but is still far from the historic peak recorded in 2022.
The data, which covers the period between 2019 and 2025, reveals that the last year recorded an annual increase of 10.6% in the volume of financing for renewable generation projects in Brazil, totaling R$36.3 billion. Still, the number is 22% below the 2022 level, which reached R$46.3 billion.
Camila Ramos, CEO of Cela, states that the main challenges that maintain this distance between the 2022 and 2025 scenarios are high interest rates, curtailment without reimbursement mechanisms and "a market that is still looking for appropriate instruments to price and contract complementarity between sources".
Variation in financing by technology
Cela highlights that performance is not uniform between the types of energy generation and reflects the dynamics and challenges of each technology.
The study highlights the resilience of solar distributed generation after its peak four years ago.
This modality presented the best performance among the systems in 2022, being responsible, alone, for more than R$21.8 billion in financing for renewables. In the following years, it recorded figures in the range of R$13 billion to R$14.7 billion.
According to the study, the performance observed in 2022 was due to the acquired right provided for in Law 14,300, which established the legal framework for distributed micro and minigeneration and determined that producers who filed connection requests by January 2023 would remain under the old tariff compensation rules until 2045, generating a race for technology.
Resilience would be explained by the lower impact of the new regulation thanks to the simultaneity between generation and consumption, maintaining the most attractive modality for the consumer, in addition to the remaining portfolio of remote projects with acquired rights. These are shared generation and remote self-consumption plants filed before January 2023 and which continue to be financed.
Large photovoltaic plants, in turn, fell from R$15.1 billion registered in 2022 to R$9 billion in 2025.
The survey attributes the drop to the rise in the Selic rate, which significantly increased the capital cost of projects, and to production concentrated in the daytime period, which causes excess supply and pressure on energy prices. The scenario is worsened by curtailment and the absence of reimbursement mechanisms.
Cela points out that, on average, 17.1% of plants were affected by curtailment between April 2024 and March 2025, which, added to the absence of compensation mechanisms for forced cuts, became one of the main obstacles for this source of generation.
Wind energy financing reached R$12.5 billion in 2025, after reaching R$8.9 billion in 2024, the lowest value in the historical series, a period also marked by high interest rates and curtailment. The consultancy highlights that the free energy market and self-production have expanded the base of viable projects outside the regulated environment.
Wind energy also began to play a strategic role in the composition of free market contracts and began to be sought after by consumers interested in composing portfolios capable of delivering energy more constantly throughout the day.
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Financing in BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) reached R$126 million in 2025, an increase compared to R$117 million in 2024, but still far from the highest number recorded by the technology, which was R$280 million in 2023.
Still, the research points out that the irregularity of the fundraising mechanisms for these projects, added to the drastic reduction in the costs of storage systems - which have fallen by 90% since 2010 - means that the data does not fully reflect the development of technology. Furthermore, a relevant part of the contracted systems is still included in the photovoltaic financing lines.
The document also highlights that the first auctions dedicated exclusively to storage could be held as early as 2026, which could usher in a new phase for the technology, with a direct impact on financing volumes.
The consultancy's CEO also assesses that wind energy and storage systems are gaining a strategic role in the electricity sector, as they prove capable of solving grid challenges. According to her, this trend should be reflected in financing volumes in the coming years.
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Source: CNN