Brazil, undeterred by the December sale of just seven of 17 dam concessions slated for auction, plans a new round of bidding in May to meet energy demand expected over the next two to three years. In another move to boost the power supply, the government has announced plans to issue preliminary environmental licenses this year for two large dams on the Amazon region’s Madeira River. Concessions for the dams, whose collective generating capacity would total 6,450 megawatts (MW), could be auctioned off as soon as the second half of the year. Critics of government hydropower policy dismiss the Amazon dam-licensing news as an election-year gambit by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to shift attention from its weak December... [Log in to read more]