A solar array in Três Unidos, a Kambeba Indigenous community on the Negro River in the Brazilian Amazon.
Photographer: Michael Dantas/Bloomberg
Solar Panels and Batteries Are Changing Life in Brazil’s Amazon
Clean energy projects are taking off across the rainforest, reducing the need to burn diesel and bringing 24/7 power for refrigeration, schooling and tourism.
Brazil’s Amazon teems with plant and animal life and is critical to the health of the planet as a storehouse of carbon dioxide. The nation also has the cleanest national grid among G20 countries, thanks to abundant hydropower, much of it originating in the Amazon.
But many Amazonian communities aren’t connected to the grid. In remote areas with no roads, transmission lines are difficult to build and maintain. Instead, they depend on polluting diesel fuel for electricity.