Brazil’s Ceara exempts small rooftop PV from environmental licensing

March 7 – The State Council on the Environment of the Brazilian state of Ceara approved a resolution exempting rooftop solar installations of up to 2 MW from environmental licensing.

If the solar generation exceeds 2 MW, authorisation is required from Ceara’s state superintendency of environment, known as Semace.

The new resolution, made public last week, also exempts micro and mini wind energy generation projects up to 75 kW and 5 MW, respectively. In both cases, the exemption is only given if the projects are not located in permanent preservation areas (APP) or conservation units (CUs). Biomass or biogas projects with output larger than 5 MW will also need to be licensed.

Recently, Brazil put into effect a new set of rules for distributed generation (DG) net metering, allowing consumers to gain credits for the surplus output and use them to reduce the electricity bill or the cost of other DG systems.

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