An exclusive analysis found at least 36 renewable energy companies have pivoted toward building massive server hubs to cash in on excess generation.Nearly 80% of slated districts overlap with traditional lands where communities are unaware of industrial risks to hydrological cycles and biodiversity.Government officials marketed the country’s green matrix to global investors while leveraging the power surplus in high-stakes trade talks with the United States.
The global appetite for artificial intelligence is pushing Brazil to lead an unprecedented move in the world regarding data centers. While around the globe, big tech struggles to find energy to power the infrastructures that store and process data, in Brazil the story is just the opposite: Data center proposers come from the power industry itself — more precisely, renewable energy.
An exclusive analysis conducted by The Intercept Brasil and Mongabay (read it in Portuguese) revealed that 65% of the requests to connect data centers to the main power grid originated from renewable energy companies — considering only plans presented to the Ministry of Mines and Energy through December 2025. By that date, 68 connection requests had been reported across 37 Brazilian municipalities.
