Our partner Diogo Nebias was featured in an O Globo article on the 2026 Capacity Reserve Auction, which contracted 19.5 GW of power in two stages: the largest auction in the electricity sector since 2021.
The contracting involves R$ 64.5 billion in investment and covers thermal plants running on natural gas, coal, diesel, fuel oil and biodiesel, as well as hydroelectric plants. Contracts range from 3 to 15 years, with supply starting in stages between 2026 and 2031.
The capacity reserve auction does not contract energy in the traditional sense. It contracts availability, which is the guarantee that plants will be ready to dispatch at times of peak demand or drops in intermittent generation. With the growing share of wind and solar in the energy mix, this type of contracting becomes structural rather than an emergency measure.
Between the contracted MW and the operating MW, the layer of legal and financial execution is dense: incorporation and governance of SPVs, project finance structuring, issuance of incentivized debentures, capacity contracts with the CCEE, insurance, guarantees, EPC and regulatory and environmental compliance. Each winning project requires simultaneous coordination between sector regulation, debt instruments and contractual engineering, and the sophistication of these instruments is what determines whether the project attracts competitive capital or stalls at origination.
Infrastructure and power generation are strategic practice areas for PSNA. Our partners have experience advising domestic and international players on energy projects: from corporate and regulatory structuring to financing and closing, including project finance, incentivized debentures and capital markets transactions.
Link to the O Globo article: https://lnkd.in/d9uCF6N2
