How much of Brazil electricity comes from renewable energy
How much of Brazil electricity comes from renewable energy is best answered with 2 different numbers, because they measure 2 different things. About 85% of Brazil installed electricity generation capacity, 215.9 gigawatts of centralized power plants as of January 2026, came from renewable sources, the energy regulator ANEEL states. A gigawatt equals 1 billion watts of generating capacity.
Measured a second way, the share of electricity Brazil actually generated in 2025 that came from renewable sources reached 86.6%, according to Our World in Data, an independent research dataset. That is more than double the 37.0% share in China the same year, and more than 3 times the 23.6% share in Japan and the 24.1% share in India. Neither ratio is stated directly by the source, both come from dividing the sourced figures against each other.
Share of electricity actually generated in each country in 2025, not installed generation capacity, from Our World in Data.
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| Brazil | 86.6 |
| Germany | 59.1 |
| China | 37.0 |
| India | 24.1 |
| Japan | 23.6 |
Brazil built toward that number with 136 new power plants commissioned in 2025 across 17 states, 63 of them solar farms and 43 wind farms, according to ANEEL.
All 4 categories are part of the 136 new plants ANEEL states came online across 17 Brazilian states in 2025.
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| Solar | 63 |
| Wind | 43 |
| Small hydro | 11 |
| Thermal | 15 |
What Brazil actually built in September 2026
A grid this reliant on renewable power creates a different problem than the one that built it. Wind and solar output depends on weather, and hydropower depends on rainfall, so a grid needs more wires to move power to where demand is, and somewhere to put power when supply and demand do not match. ANEEL is not holding a new wind, solar or biomass generation auction in September 2026. On September 10, 2026, it opened public consultation, running through October 26, on a transmission auction scheduled for April 30, 2027, at the B3 exchange in Sao Paulo, expected to bring 12.9 billion reais of investment and 29,500 jobs across 13 states.
Reading the announcement ANEEL itself published, rather than a summary written about it, shows a detail not stated anywhere else. Lot 5 of that auction is Brazil first grid scale battery storage system ever contracted inside the transmission grid itself, 100 megawatts and 200 megawatt hours, serving the cities of Cruzeiro do Sul and Feijao in the state of Acre, under an 18 year contract instead of the standard 30 year transmission contracts normally run, because batteries do not last as long as the transmission lines they sit beside.
On the same day, ANEEL signed contracts for 2.5 gigawatts of hydropower capacity expansion across 5 existing hydroelectric plants, from an auction actually held back in March 2026. It also signed a separate set of transmission contracts worth 1.75 billion reais at an average discount of 53.20%, expected to create more than 4,000 jobs.
None of the September 2026 activity is a new wind, solar or biomass generation auction. It is Brazil building the transmission lines and, for the first time, the grid scale batteries a renewable heavy grid now needs, in the same week its overall generation mix stayed near a world leading renewable share.