Centro de Documentación OLADE -

This article aims at analyzing China’s penetration in Brazil’s electric sector in each of its three segments and different sources of energy. It offers the first estimates of Chinese-controlled power generation installed capacity, kilometers of transmission lines, and number of consumers in Brazil, and their evolution over time based on Brazilian official data. In ten years, Chinese electric power companies have become the main foreign investors, and Brazil concentrates the biggest part of these corporations’ overseas power generation capacity. Chinese firms’ investment pattern there is different from other countries, where they focus on non-renewables. Instead, in Brazil they have invested where the country has a natural advantage or an abundance of resources, such as hydroelectric generation.