The event marks a pivotal moment for the country's energy transition, as the sector calls for regulatory and economic action to unlock investment in hydraulic storage systems.
Brazil stands at a crossroads. With approximately 90 percent of its electricity generated from renewable sources, the country already has one of the cleanest power systems in the world built on decades of hydropower investment. But the rapid growth of solar and wind generation is creating new pressures: rising curtailment, grid instability during peak hours, and a growing need for large-scale, long-duration electricity storage. Recent estimates put losses from renewable curtailment alone at $1.1 billion in 2025.
Pumped storage is a proven, long-lived technology ideally suited to address these challenges. Unlike batteries, it requires no critical minerals, draws on Brazil's world-class civil and hydropower engineering capabilities, and can provide not just stored energy but a full suite of services that keep the grid stable and reliable. A pumped storage plant can be expected to serve at least 100 years with only minimal maintenance costs.
The roundtable centres on a set of five priority actions that the hydropower industry is formally presenting to the Brazilian government to:
Define the regulatory identity of pumped storage: resolve current ambiguity over how pumped storage projects are classified, licensed, and connected to the grid.
Support project development: establish clear signals on where storage is needed and create a predictable pipeline of auctions to encourage developers to bring projects forward.
Operationalise long-term contracts: making 30-year capacity contracts available, giving investors the revenue certainty needed to finance projects with 50-year-plus lifespans.
Streamline environmental licensing: create proportionate permitting for pumped storage, recognising that many project types like closed-loop systems, carry a lower environmental footprint than conventional hydropower.
Coordinate across agencies: align the roles of Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy, ANEEL, EPE, ONS, ANA, and environmental authorities around a shared implementation agenda.
Recent signals from the Brazilian government are encouraging: CNPE Resolutions No. 7 and 8, published in May 2026, provide a policy mandate for pumped storage procurement and planning. The roundtable aims to translate that political momentum into concrete regulatory action.
“Brazil has always been a hydropower superpower” said IHA CEO Eddie Rich, attending the event in Brasília. “With increasing reliance on wind and solar power, it needs a reliable, domestic, and secure way, to balance and store all that power. Huge water batteries (or ‘pumped storage’) is the only proven way to do that at scale. Water, wind, sun, gets the job done. The industry can deliver. What it needs is the regulatory certainty and contractual frameworks to turn promising projects into construction sites. That is what this roundtable is about: working with government and companies together to make it happen, and to make it happen now.”
The IHA continues to work with its members and government partners around the world to accelerate the deployment of hydropower and pumped storage as essential pillars of the clean energy transition.
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