The Brazilian Ministry of the Environment (Ministério do Meio Ambiente/MMA) is going to propose to the country's Secretary of State the use of solar energy in popular houses built by the national Growth Acceleration Programme (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento/PAC).
The idea - launched during an MMA workshop held on March 10th and focused on discussing a government plan for promoting water heating through solar energy - is to offer na alternative to the use of electric showers, responsible for up to one-third of electric energy consumed in homes. Water heating for bathing is responsible for 5% of the country's consumption of electricity.
A first version of the plan is to be sent to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva next week.
Specialists from the Ministry's Secretariat of Climate Change and Environmental Quality, from the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy (Ministério de Minas e Energia/MME), from other national government sectors and international agencies participated in the workshop, which was supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) through international cooperation agency GTZ. Specialists shared experiences so as to come up with ways of enhancing the use of solar energy in Brazil, reducing costs and other problems.
A plan for incentivating solar energy may also help implement the National Climate Change Plan (Plano Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima), which foresees the use of solar water heating for mitigating climate change effects. Solar energy is widely considered a better option to other conventional sources of energy, since it is natural, ecologic, free, inexhaustible and harmless to the environment.
The Growth Acceleration Programme was launched by President Lula in 2007 so as to, as its name suggests, boost the country's economic growth.
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