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Brazil’s Locomotive Breath



The process of growth and modernization in Brazil has been always described as an example to be followed by other developing countries. Nevertheless, the Brazilian ‘locomotive’ has stopped.

The country is going through a period of dramatic political and economic instability. Although the Olympics Games should have been an international show of Brazilian power, they revealed the structural weakness of a country full of ambiguities and contradictions instead. Petrobras’ inquiry, combined with negative effects of the economic crisis, seem to have temporarily buried the China of South America. Oil wealth becoming yet another time not a blessing but a curse.

“In a broader sense, the hydrocarbons and its scarcity phychologization, its monetization (and related weaponization) is serving rather a coercive and restrictive status quo than a developmental incentive” – diagnoses prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic, and concludes: “That essentially calls not for an engagement but compliance.“

To describe the history of the nation we need to focus our attention on oil, because the black gold is the embodiment of the success -and fall- of the Brazilian economy.

Oil – how black is gold

One the central drivers of Brazilian economic growth has been the production and the export of natural resources and their products. Looking at Brazil’s GDP between 1982 and 2015, three main trends can be observed. (i) A stable growth pattern from 1982 to 2002. (ii) The GDP rocketing up between 2003 and 2012, with a light slowdown during 2009-2010 caused by the financial crisis. (iii) A fall of GDP’s values between 2012 and 2015. Analyzing the evolution of the percentage of annual GDP growth’s, it is not possible to identify a specific trend. The most significant point that can be made is the constant growth of the GDP between 2004 and 2008, which was around 5% per year. The economic growth does not just imply a dramatic increase of GDP but also the improvement in social-economic status of millions of poor brasilians. Starting from 2001 the level of absolute poverty – defined as the percentage living with less than two dollars per day – decreased 12%. The levels of relative poverty – defined as the percentange of people with less than 50% of the average income – fell by 25% between 2002 and 2013.

Graph 1: Trend of Brazilian GDP 1982 e il 2014


Graph 2: Percentage of GDP Grotwh 1982-2014


Graph 3: Trends of poverty levels 1995-2013


The value of export and of the satellite activities of natural resources for Brazilian is represented by their proportion on the total GDP. As clearly shown in Graph 4, one of the engines of the Brazilian boom in the 2000s has been oil. Its incidence on GDP increased remarkably from 1999, a stable growth that reached its peak during 2000s. Between 2003 and 2006 oil rents produced around 3% of total GDP. Graph 5 shows the cost of oil per barrel from 1980 to 2015. To clarify, the most important oil reserve in Brazil is Pré-Sal, which needs to compete in a market in which the price is of at least 70 dollars per barrel in order to be profitable. The fall of the international price of oil, then, has been penalizing the Brazilian economy that was already damaged by the crisis of Chinese demand and the slowdown of FDI.

Graph 4: Percentage of oil and natural resources on Brazilian GDP 1982-2012 


Graph 5: Trends of oil barrel 1980-2014


Eike Batista, imagine of Brazilian fable

The story of Erike Batista is bond with the growth and the fall of Brazilian economy. Batista has been one of the richest man in the world, 8th in the Forbes rank of worldwide billionaires and owner of 30 billion dollars in 2012. However, this changed in 2014 when he admitted to the loss of his wealth and his debt of one billion dollars. How is it possible that this self-made billionaire lost his wealth totalling a whopping 30 billion dollars? The success and the fall of Batista’s business is connected to oil. In the 80s, after completing his metallurgic studies, he went to Amazon forest to implement machines in the research and the extraction of gold. In the 1983 he bought a small society in the Canadian stock exchange, of extraction and trade of natural resources., that gained the value of 1.7 billion dollars in a few years. In 2002 he sold his company for 875 million. The devaluation of the asset was due to wrong investment done by the society in Greece, Russia and Czech Republic, which cost million of loss.

Batista exploited new opportunities that arose during the Brazilian economic boom. Between 2001 and 2002 he created and subsequently sold two companies to the Brazilian state; a thermodynamics and an iron production company. The holding that would make a Batista billionaire was OGX (Petròleo e Gàs Participacoes), specialized in the research and refinement of oil and gas. The market strategy of OGX was aggressive from the beginning. In 2007 he arranged the rights of exploration for 21 areas for OGX doubling the amount offered by its competitors. The next year OGX was able to produce barrels at the cost of 145 dollars per barrel and it announced their structures would be able to produce 1 million barrel per day in 2019. Batista’s ambitions and his confidence in Brazilian economy encouraged him to invest a large amount of money to build up an harbour at Acu, 400 km away from Rio de Janeiro. The project was supposed to create a centre for the refinement and the trade of oil products, thereby radically increasing OGX’ productivity.

From 2008 onwards, the Brazilian magistrate started to investigate bribes that Batista allegedly gave to the Governator of Amapà, Waldex Gòez, concessions of privileges for his companies. Even though the media caught wind of the investigation, the judiciary case was closed without any charges. The slowdown of Brazilian economy and the fall of the oil barrel started to strain foreign investors and foreign shareholders and lead them to reduce investments into Batista’s companies. The final blow was caused by the Abu Dhabi fund, Mudabala Development, which retired from EBX – one of Batista’s holdings – and asked for the liquidation of all their stock options which totaled 1.5 billion dollars. The financial pressure then cut the liquidity of Batista’s companies, which, having invested a lot of money, survived using financial leverage. Like a balloon, EBX snapped under the weight of financial debts that made Batista lose all of his assets.

Petrobas investigation

In March 2014, a group of Brazilian judges started to investigate the relationship between the Worker’s Party and the public oil company Petrobras. The charge was that executive directors of Petrobras and of the main building societies (Btp) developed a corrupt system in which Btp would receive contracts for the construction of oil platforms increasing the building costs between 1% and 3%. In exchange, governmental parties would obtain illegal funds to sponsor political campaigns. The companies involved were Camargo Corrêa, Oas, Utc-Constram, Odebrecht, Mendes Júnior, Engevix, Queiroz Galvão, Iesa Óleo & Gás e Galvão Engenharia and members of the Workers’ Party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (Pmdb) and the Progressive Party. (Pp).

The main consequence of the inquiry was the delegitimization of the Workers’ Party that led Brazil from 2002 onwards. The President, Dilma Rouseleff was forced to leave office despite the fact she was not personally involved in the investigation. The successor of former President Lula endured immediate pressure to resign for her knowledge of systematic corruption as Chairman of Petrobras and Minister of Energy (2003-2005). Nevertheless, the impeachment of Rouseleff regarded the charge of having transferred public funds from national banks to finance social expenses that went beyond the fixed amount allocated for public expenses. However, the charges that led to her dismissal did not include the Petrobas scandal. Eduardo Cunha was the political leader leading the group that called for Dilma’s dismissal. Paradoxically, he was not only found with a secret million dollar bank account in Switzerland, but was also barred from assuming any public position for eight years due to an investigation for his involvement in corruption and bribes. Some representatives of worldwide left-wing parties talk about a conspiracy to dismiss the Workers’ Party. The Brazilian and international elite allegedly exploited the economic crisis to destroy the consensus of Lula and Rouseleff’s party, which had always had significant popular support. Lula won the election in 2002 with 46.4% of the votes against just 23.3% of his opposing candidate José Serra. In 2006, Lula was confirmed President with 48.6% in the next election. His successor, Dilma Rouseleff, won in 2010 with 46.9% of the votes. Even though she experienced a small decline, Rouseleff won the election in 2014 with 41.6% of the votes. These Brazilian governments made enemies in the international market due to their politics of nationalization and semi-nationalization of natural resources. For example, Petrobras, founded in 1953, was partially privatized during the 90s. However, Lula started a propagandist campaign in 2007 to return company under state control. In addition, to prevent the private exploitation of the Pré-Sal oil reserve, Lula’s government passed a law to give to Petrobras the monopoly to explore the area and extract oil from Pré-Sal.

Some influential voices, such as independent Brazilian experts and academics raised concerns about the nature of the process. Pedro Fassoni Arruda argues that there were secret powers behind the impeachment that were also involved in the coup d’etat in 1964. In a similar vein, Pablo Ortellado criticised the framing of Rouseleff in the media. Sapelli contends that the modern political history of Brazil is characterized by a deep fragmentation of parties, which means every President has to deal with many small personalist parties. The external support that every government needs to administrate generated the construction of a system of corruption intrinsic to Brazilian society. Many experts believe that judge’s actions could enforce the trust of markets and investors in Brazilian institutions. Cutting the ambiguous bonds that exist between parties and companies should help to make the legal framework more stable and safe, strengthening the power of the Law. This could be a message from Brazil to all the world, that whoever is corrupted, no matter what status, will be punished.

Recently, the news reported the Brazilian parliament approved a law with 292 in 393 to abolish the monopoly of Petrobras on the reserve of Pré-Sal. This law seems to be just the first step of a greater project of privatization pursued by President Michel Temer. With strong politics of liberalization for Brazilian natural resources, Brazil seems to offer intriguing opportunities for business and investments for many multinationals. If Petrobras’ inquiry is just conspiracy or smart intuition is hard to understand. Surely, the destiny of Brazil will be, another time, defined by black gold. For better or worse.

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Four Things You Should Know About Battery Storage

MD Staff



The global energy landscape is undergoing a major transformation. This year’s Innovate4Climate (I4C) will have a priority focus on battery storage, helping to identify ways to overcome the technology, policy and financing barriers to deploy batteries widely and close the global energy storage gap.

Here are four things about battery storage that are worth knowing.

First, energy storage is key to realizing the potential of clean energy

Renewable sources of energy, mainly solar and wind, are getting cheaper and easier to deploy in developing countries, helping expand energy access, aiding global efforts to reach the Sustainable Development Goal on Energy (SDG7) and to mitigate climate change. But solar and wind energy are variable by nature, making it necessary to have an at-scale, tailored solution to store the electricity they produce and use it when it is needed most.

Batteries are a key part of the solution. However, the unique requirements of developing countries’ grids are not yet fully considered in the current market for battery storage – even though these countries may have the largest potential for battery deployment.

Today’s market for batteries is driven mainly by the electric vehicles industry and most mainstream technologies cannot provide long duration storage nor withstand harsh climatic conditions and have limited operation and maintenance capacity. Many developing countries also have limited access to other flexibility options such as natural gas generation or increased transmission capacity.

Second, boosting battery storage is a major opportunity

Global demand for battery storage is expected to reach 2,800 gigawatt hours (GWh) by 2040 – the equivalent of storing a little more than half of all the renewable energy generated [today] around the world in a day. Power systems around the world will need many exponentially more storage capacity by 2050 to integrate even more solar and wind energy into the electricity grid.

For battery storage to become an at-scale enabler for the storage and deployment of clean energy, it will be imperative to accelerate the innovation in and deployment of new technologies and their applications. It will also be important to foster the right regulatory and policy environments and procurement practices to drive down the cost of batteries at scale and to ensure financial arrangements that will create confidence in cost recovery for developers. It will also be essential to find ways to ensure sustainability in the battery value chain, safe working conditions and environmentally responsible recycling.

With the right enabling environment and the innovative use of batteries, it will be possible to help developing countries build the flexible energy systems of the future and deliver electricity to the 1 billion people who live without it even today.

Third, battery storage can be transformational for the clean energy landscape in developing countries

Today, battery technology is not widely deployed in large-scale energy projects in developing countries. The gap is particularly acute in Sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 600 million people still live without access to reliable and affordable electricity, despite the region’s significant wind and solar power potential and burgeoning energy demand. Catalyzing new markets will be key to drive down costs for batteries and make it a viable energy storage solution in Africa.

Already, there is tremendous demand in the region today for energy solutions that do not just boost the uptake of clean energy, but also help stabilize and strengthen existing electricity grids and aid the global push to adopt more clean energy and fight against climate change.

Fourth, the World Bank is stepping up its catalytic role in boosting battery storage solutions

There is a clear need to catalyze a new market for batteries and other storage solutions that are suitable for electricity grids for a variety of applications and deployable on a large scale. The World Bank is already taking steps to address this challenge. In 2018, the World Bank Group announced a $1 billion global battery storage program, aiming to raise $4 billion more in private and public funds to create markets and help drive down prices for batteries, so it can be deployed as an affordable and at-scale solution in middle-income and developing countries.

By 2025, the World Bank expects to finance 17.5 GWh of battery storage – more than triple the 4-5 GWh currently installed in developing countries. With the right solutions, it can be possible to build large-scale renewable energy projects with significant energy storage components, deploy batteries to stabilize power grids in countries with weak infrastructure, and increase off-grid access to communities that are ready for clean energy with storage.

The World Bank has already financed over 15% of grid-related battery storage in various stages of deployment in developing countries to date.

In Haiti, a combined solar and battery storage project will ultimately provide electricity to 800,000 people and 10,000 schools, clinics and other institutions. An emergency solar and battery storage power plant is being built in the Gambia, as are mini-grids in several island states to boost their resilience.

In India, a joint WB-IFC team is developing one of the largest hybrid solar, wind and storage power plants in the world, while in South Africa, the World Bank is helping develop 1.44 gigawatt-hours of battery storage capacity, which is expected to be the largest project of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa.

World Bank

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Driving a Smarter Future

MD Staff







Advanced forms of smart charging



Perfect solution?




Impact of charging according to type




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What may cause Oil prices to fall?

Osama Rizvi









image: Bloomberg







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