By Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Leticia Fucuchima
RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian authorities are likely to approve reinstating daylight saving time after it was abolished five years ago, multiple sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, as the country faces a major drought that has been affecting its power generation efforts.
A prolonged drought has forced a policy shift toward using more expensive thermoelectric plants and energy imports, which is boosting power bills.
Despite the growth of wind and solar power in Latin America’s largest economy in recent years, more than half of Brazil’s power supply still comes from hydroelectric plants.
The drought has affected some of the country’s largest hydroelectric plants, including two powered by an Amazonian river.
The level of reservoirs in the key Southeast/Center-West region, Brazil’s main hydroelectric area, is expected to end September below 50%, as the region also gets less than 50% of the average rainfall for this time of year.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro abolished the daylight saving time after he took office in 2019, on grounds that it was no longer benefiting the country’s power sector.
By moving the clocks forward an hour between November and February, Brazilian Summer Time’s aim was to make use of more daylight hours and save energy.
However, officials now believe that reinstating it could help alleviate pressure on the power system in late afternoons, when consumption is at its peak but solar power stations stop generating electricity as the sun sets.
“The inclination is towards approving it,” one of the sources said. “A study by ONS (Brazil’s national electric system operator) will serve as base, but essentially the decision will be political.”
Mines and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira has already acknowledged that the return of the daylight saving time was a possibility. He will attend an energy committee meeting later on Thursday and then speak in a press conference.
Some sectors have cheered the possibility while others would likely be negatively impacted.
Bars and restaurants backed the move, with local association Abrasel saying the extra hour of daylight would help increase the number of clients at 6-8 p.m. and could drive monthly revenues up 10% to 15%.
Moving clocks forward by one hour, however, would affect flight schedules, forcing airlines to adjust the departure and arrival times of their flights and connections while facing additional costs to relocate crews.
The sources did not know when the daylight saving time might come into effect after authorities’ approval.
“The (hydroelectric) reservoirs are not that low,” one of the people said. “But as we are in a severe drought and we don’t know what lies ahead, we need to save water.”
(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier in Rio de Janeiro and Leticia Fucuchima in Sao Paulo; Writing by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
