Solar power to the people: how the sun is bringing light – and TV – to Amazon villages | Global development | The Guardian

Oct 29, 2024

Their fuel resources have long been plundered by others, while national grids have failed to connect them. Now, solar panels could give more than electricity to Indigenous people

At dusk, Piyulaga village starts to wake up. Families gather at the entrances of their huts, children play and cycle around, and Brazilian country music fills the air as lights flicker on in the small settlement in the Xingu Indigenous territory of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Some residents watch TV while others relax in hammocks with their phones, illuminated by spotlights in the communal area.

It would be trivial but for one detail: lights have only been available for a few weeks, thanks to the installation of new solar panels on each home.

In recent years, solar projects have multiplied in remote communities in several Amazonian countries, mainly with funding from civil society organisations, helping to democratise electricity in off-grid areas of Latin America.

The Amazon regions in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, which comprise more than 80% of the biome, have the lowest electricity coverage in each country. Despite the abundance of hydroelectric power and oil extraction in the region, most residents in these isolated areas are disconnected from national grids and rely on costly, polluting sources such as thermoelectric plants and diesel generators, benefiting little from the resources extracted from their lands.

However, examples such as the installation of solar panels in Piyulaga show that the benefits of new energy developments can be shared, changing lives and creating new opportunities.

According to experts interviewed by Dialogue Earth, small solar systems are cheaper, have a smaller environmental impact and require less maintenance than other sources of energy, avoiding polluting gas emissions. In addition, they point to the region’s abundance of sunshine.

“In remote regions, the choice of solar energy has a universal consensus,” says Vinícius Oliveira, project leader at the Institute for Energy and the Environment (Iema), a nonprofit organisation promoting public policies on energy and transport.

“But to solve the problem at scale, you need a lot of resources and a certain ‘commitment’ … otherwise, you become dependent on philanthropy,” says Oliveira. “This is only possible through public policies.”

Nearly all Brazil’s isolated systems – areas not connected to the national grid – are in the Amazon. About 3 million people living there rely on thermoelectric plants, and just under a million have only sporadic access to electricity, mainly using diesel generators.

In 2020, the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro launched the More Light for the Amazon programme to expand renewable energy in isolated areas, but progress has been slow. By the end of 2022, 13,000 households, less than 20% of the 70,000 promised, were connected, according to an analysis by Dialogue Earth based on data from the ministry of mines and energy.

In 2023, this initiative was integrated into Light for All, a policy introduced by the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Since then, the process has accelerated: 31,000 homes have been connected in remote areas of the Amazon, although Light for All has a target of 228,000 units by 2026.

Renewable electricity has reached most villages of the Xingu territory, Brazil’s oldest Indigenous reserve, which has been a forerunner in solar projects.

In 2009, the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), which has a history of working closely with Xingu peoples, began installing solar panels at strategic points in the 2.6m-hectare (6.5m-acre) territory, which until then had been dependent on diesel generators.

“Everything was done to serve the collective,” says Marcelo Martins, an ISA agronomist, pointing out that schools, health centres and water pumps have gained clean energy.

Now, solar energy in Xingu is entering a new phase: the local energy distributor, with funds from the federal government, is equipping each house in Piyulaga village with panels.

Tapiyawa Waurá’s new hut is still being built so his family has not moved in yet, but solar energy already charges mobile phones and powers appliances. He is in charge of school lunches, and takes a tucunaré fish, or peacock bass, out of a newly installed freezer. “Before, they had to go straight into the fire,” he says. “Now I can leave them here for longer.”

The freezer, mobile phones and spotlights are now among the community’s most used and valued equipment. Though the night sky is no longer as starry with the increase in artificial light, replacing solar panels with many generators has brought quiet and taken away the smell of burning fuel, say residents.

The telephone box in one corner of the village no longer works either. Almost everyone holds a mobile phone. This unlimited connection to the internet in a place where, until recently, there was little access and where language and traditional rituals are important, has brought with it some concerns among leaders. Still, they say that there is no turning back.

“Technology comes with problems, but it will be useful for those who are aware,” says Yanahin Waurá, the president of the local Tulukai Indigenous Association.

An initiative in the Peruvian Amazon is also using the connectivity enabled by solar energy to strengthen the protection of lands. Since 2023, the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (Aidesep) has been leading a project that installs solar panels and satellite dishes in communities without access to electricity in Peru’s north-east. According to the association’s coordinator, Julio Cusurichi, the installations strengthen surveillance and forest protection across large territories.

Solar energy makes it possible to charge electronic devices – such as mobile phones, drones and satellite dishes – which improve communication between community members and land monitoring. Systems can alert local people to territorial invasions or conflicts with external parties. Every incident is documented and stored in a centralised system.

Cusurichi says the organisation is integrating a real-time platform that enables environmental activists to document territorial threats. This data is uploaded and held by Aidesep’s national office.

With the help of the equipment already installed, Aidesep is conducting an analysis to identify communities in each region that lack access to electricity.

“The government isn’t interested in supporting services that will help communities, but solar energy is an alternative,” says Cusurichi.

A similar project has also been successful in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Ceibo Alliance, an organisation bringing together the Secoya, Siona, Kofán and Waorani Indigenous peoples, has installed solar systems in 16 communities, allowing territorial guards to use clean energy to charge their drones, GPS and other surveillance equipment.

“We must implement projects that benefit [the communities], creating autonomy and without harming the environment and culture,” says Hernán Payaguaje, co-founder of the alliance.

However, these projects are so far making only a modest dent when compared with the challenge of replacing fossil fuel generators, which are still the main alternative in these regions, according to Eduardo Pichilingue, a coordinator at Cuencas Sagradas (Sacred Basins), an Indigenous alliance to protect the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru.

Although the Ecuadorian Amazon is home to most of the country’s oil blocks and its main hydroelectric dam, more than 70% of its Indigenous communities are beyond the national grid’s reach, echoing their Brazilian neighbours’ situation. The rate is similar in the Peruvian Amazon, which faces even more logistical challenges given that its territory is several times larger than Ecuador’s.

But for José Serra Vega, an independent energy and environmental consultant, the difficulty goes beyond logistics. “The Amazon is treated as if it were a distant or foreign country,” says the Peruvian expert. “There is no interest in the Amazon due to lack of knowledge and because its inhabitants have little political weight.”

Isolated communities are not the only groups facing precarious access to electricity in the Amazon. In many cases, entire municipalities and sizeable regions remain unconnected to the national electricity system.

The Colombian department of Vichada, at the border with Venezuela and one of the country’s gateways to the Amazon, is one such area facing severe challenges. This 100,000 sq km (24m acre) region remains disconnected from the national grid, including the capital, Puerto Carreño – a fishing and farming town of about 22,000 inhabitants that relies mainly on thermoelectric plants and faces frequent blackouts.

“Sometimes it’s whole days, whole weeks without power,” says Sonia Prada, a teacher and activist campaigning to improve the electricity service in Vichada. Along with other Puerto Carreño residents, Prada has participated in protests against the lack of electricity supply.

Colombia used to buy electricity for the area from Venezuela, which had more developed infrastructure. But this cooperation was disrupted in 2019 due to a diplomatic conflict and a surge in electricity tariffs.

One of the great hopes for Vichada’s energy sovereignty was the Renewable Energy Research Centre (Ciner). The project, aimed at producing solar energy and serving as a training hub, started construction more than a decade ago but has never been operational. Its facilities are abandoned, shrouded in allegations of corruption and the waste of about 30bn Colombian pesos (about £5.4m).

“It’s definitely a white elephant,” says Julio Cesar Hidalgo, a local leader and rector of a school in Puerto Carreño. “It’s sad to see how abandoned it is.”

This story is published in partnership with Dialogue Earth