Brazil Data Center Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033

The 38-gigawatt number, read correctly

Brazil's electricity system has received data center grid connection requests totalling 38 gigawatts. The figure is confirmed by the Ministry of Mines and Energy and repeated across independent reporting, and it has become the defining number in the Brazilian data center conversation. It is routinely presented as a demand forecast. It is not one.

Three facts sit underneath the headline, and each one changes what it means.

Layer one — the queue

38,000 MW of requests for an access opinion (parecer de acesso). That is 38 times the 1,000 MW of commissioned IT capacity currently operating in the country, and equal to 17.22% of the 220.7 GW of centralised generating capacity installed across the entire national interconnected system. Requests only began in 2020 and numbered 12 through May 2025; the queue then grew 330% between 2024 and 2025 and stood at 28.5 GW in December 2025 for projects scheduled through 2038, before climbing to 38 GW by mid-2026.

Layer two — the award

In the first 2026 access round under the PNAST framework, the system operator selected 43 applications for the backbone grid. 38 of them were data centers, totalling 7,040 MW and an estimated R$159 billion of investment. That 7,040 MW is 18.53% of the queue — and 7.04 times the installed base. This is the only slice of the 38 GW with a wire behind it, and it is the number the market should be sized against.

Layer three — the approvals to date

As of June 2026 the ministry had recorded 52 access requests to the backbone grid, concentrated in Ceará, Bahia, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Norte. 18 had received technical connection approval by ministry ordinance and 34 remained under evaluation — a 34.62% approval rate on applications filed. If every request received a favourable access opinion, accumulated maximum demand would reach 13.2 GW by 2035, or 34.74% of the queued total.

The gap between 38 GW and 13.2 GW is not pessimism. It is the width of the gate.

Market size and forecast

This report sizes two things and deliberately not a third. It sizes commissioned IT capacity in megawatts — the physical market — and annual capital formation in US dollars — the money the build consumes. It does not size colocation or cloud services revenue, because Brazilian operators do not disclose facility-level revenue and any such figure would rest on a third-party estimate this report will not use. Capacity and capital are also the quantities the 38 GW queue actually governs.

The market is valued at USD 1.15 billion in 2026, rising to USD 5.00 billion in 2033 at a 23.36% CAGR — USD 18.85 billion cumulative across the window. Capacity rises from 1,000 MW to 5,576 MW, a 27.83% CAGR and a 457.6% increase. Facility count rises from 205 to 1,143 at the same rate, holding average commissioned facility size at 4.88 MW.

Value growth runs below volume growth — 23.36% against 27.83% — because the base year is already elevated. Brazil's leased market measured 706 MW at mid-2026, roughly half of Latin America's installed capacity, with 106 MW delivered in the first half of the year and a further 134 MW scheduled before year-end, putting the leasing estate near 840 MW at year-end before enterprise and self-build capacity is counted. With 7,040 MW of awarded pipeline behind it, the market is compounding from a high floor rather than from a standing start. The forecast also excludes any capacity from future access rounds, which makes the scenarios a test of conversion risk rather than of pipeline growth.

Why the market grows fast and still cannot grow fast enough

A data center reaches operating capacity in roughly 18 months to two years. A transmission project takes about seven. That ratio — somewhere between 3.5 and 4.7 times — is the single most important structural fact in this market, and it cannot be financed away by a data center operator, because the asset that is missing is a line it does not own.

Brazil's generation is among the cleanest in the world, with 84.67% of installed capacity from renewable sources. But that capacity sits where the wind and sun are, in the Northeast and increasingly in Bahia and Rio Grande do Norte, while the load historically sat in the Southeast. Data centers arriving in the interior of São Paulo or in Ceará are therefore not plugging into spare capacity; they are commissioning transmission. Where the line does not exist, they build it themselves — Ascenty built its own connection: a 32-kilometre line from a CPFL substation in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste to its Sumaré campus, secured through an ONS access opinion, serving a first phase of 90 MW with room to double. Where the line exists but is congested, they move to the generation: Renova is siting up to 85 MW of data center capacity beside its 432.6 MW Alto Sertão III wind complex in Igaporã, Bahia, at a cost of R$900 million, explicitly to use electricity that would otherwise be curtailed. Casa dos Ventos is applying the same logic at Caucaia, Ceará, where a data center developed with Omnia and ByteDance carries an initial planned capacity of 200 MW.

The sector's share of national electricity consumption is projected to double from 2% to between 4% and 5% between 2026 and 2031. That is a modest share of the grid and an immodest share of its growth.

Structure

Five operators carry the colocation and hyperscale layer — Ascenty, Equinix, Elea Data Centers, Scala Data Centers and ODATA — alongside a self-build tier of global hyperscalers. Brazil holds roughly half of Latin America's data center capacity, which makes it the anchor market of the region and the one through which any Latin American digital infrastructure thesis is expressed.

Bargaining power does not sit where the revenue does. In a market where the scarce input is an energised connection, the party holding the access opinion and the transmission route sets terms, whether that is a utility, a generator with curtailed power, or an operator that has built its own line. That is why the competitive variable in Brazil is not price per kilowatt of colocation but the quality and timing of a power position.

Scope and exclusions

This report covers colocation and wholesale data center operators, hyperscale self-build campuses, and enterprise and edge facilities within Brazil, together with the power, cooling, interconnection and transmission investment attached to them. It excludes cloud and software services consumed on top of the capacity, enterprise IT hardware deployed inside a facility, and the fiber long-haul market except where an operator funds it directly. Figures are for commissioned IT capacity, not gross facility power draw; where a source reports demand or power rather than commissioned capacity, the distinction is stated at the point of citation.

Table of Contents

Table of contents

1. Market overview — the 38-gigawatt number, read correctly
2. Market size and forecast, 2026–2033
3. Why the market grows fast and still cannot grow fast enough
4. Basis of estimate and research methodology
5. Competitive landscape
6. Value chain
7. Investment activity
8. Technology and innovation
9. Market risk
10. Regulatory landscape
11. Frequently asked questions

Competitive Landscape

Competitive landscape

Brazil’s colocation market is moderately consolidated, and the concentration sits where the capacity is rather than where the brand is. Three operators hold 70% of operational colocation capacity: Ascenty at 30%, ODATA at 20% and Scala Data Centers at 18%. Equinix and Elea Data Centers hold 9% each. Cirion Technologies, Tec.to, Takoda, NextStream and a tail of smaller operators and telecoms share the remaining 5%, according to the JLL survey of the Brazilian market reported by Forbes Brasil.

The ranking is about to change hands

Share of operating capacity and share of pipeline are two different league tables, and in Brazil they disagree. Counting operating capacity, under-construction and planned capacity together, the order inverts: Scala reaches roughly 800 MW before counting a separate 1.5 GW project designated Scala AI City, ahead of Ascenty at 520 MW, Omnia at 500 MW, ODATA at 480 MW and Elea at 430 MW. On the same basis, Elea carries the largest development pipeline in the country, including the 1,500 MW Rio AI City campus under construction.

Ascenty is the clearest case of how the constraint reshapes strategy. The Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure joint venture signed 150 MW of pre-leased AI capacity in three months — more than 40% of everything it had built in fifteen years — and committed US$1.2 billion to deliver it inside 18 months, according to its own announcement (Ascenty; trade coverage in DatacenterDynamics). The build is concentrated where it already holds grid positions: Sumaré 3 at 90 MW with 90 MW of expansion, Vinhedo 2 lifted from 50 MW to 80 MW, Vinhedo 3 at 90 MW, and a sixth São Paulo facility at 20 MW. The company operates or is building 40 data centres across Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia, 26 of them already operating, of which 21 are in Brazil, linked by 4,000 km of proprietary fibre.

Scala Data Centers, backed by DigitalBridge and founded in 2020, runs the other model: purpose-built HyperCore campuses with HyperEdge edge sites, a land bank of more than 2 million square metres across 57 properties in Latin America, and long-term power purchase agreements securing certified renewable supply for more than ten years (Scala Data Centers). Where Ascenty converts a grid position it already holds into AI capacity, Scala buys the position forward — land, power and equipment commitments made before the tenant signs. Both are bets on the same proposition: that the connection, not the building, is the asset.

Price is not where the competition happens

National vacancy was 4% in the first half of 2026 and 56% of new stock under construction was already pre-leased. In that condition price carries little information, and where it does it carries the wrong signal: the highest rates in the country are in Fortaleza, the market with the highest vacancy, because what is being sold there is a grid position and a submarine cable landing, not floor space.

Rates exclude energy and are quoted per kilowatt per month as published in the survey.

Who holds the bargaining power

In a market where the scarce input is an energised connection, the party holding the access opinion and the transmission route sets terms. That party may be a utility, a generator sitting on curtailed power, or an operator that built its own line. Ascenty’s 32-kilometre transmission link from a CPFL substation in Santa Bárbara d’Oeste to its Sumaré campus, secured through an ONS access opinion, is a competitive moat expressed as copper and steel rather than as brand. Renova’s decision to site up to 85 MW beside its 432.6 MW Alto Sertão III wind complex in Igaporã, Bahia, is the same logic on the generation side: the electricity exists and is curtailed, so the load moves to it.

The demand side is concentrated too. Leasing of colocation space by hyperscalers rose from about 230 MW in 2021 to 780 MW in the first half of 2026, an increase of 64% since 2025 alone, and hyperscalers run a two-track strategy of leasing third-party capacity while building their own. That gives a handful of buyers the ability to set tenure and pricing on the largest contracts. The construction pipeline this implies — shell, MEP and commissioning — is sized separately in Global Data Center Construction Market.

The competitive variable, in short, is not colocation price per kilowatt. It is the quality and timing of a power position, and the operators winning share are those that secured megawatts before they had tenants.

Value Chain

Value chain

The Brazilian data centre value chain has one stage that cannot be bought on schedule — the energised connection — and every other stage is priced around it.

Stage one: the power position

Before ground is broken, an operator needs an access opinion (parecer de acesso) from the national system operator, a route on the basic grid, and either a transmission contract or a line of its own. This stage carries no visible revenue and the longest lead time. It is also where the market’s economics are decided, because the cost of a transmission asset is socialised through the transmission usage tariff while the benefit of arriving first accrues entirely to the operator. Ascenty’s own line to Sumaré and Renova’s decision to build beside a curtailed wind complex are both attempts to internalise a cost the tariff structure would otherwise allocate by queue position rather than by willingness to pay.

Stage two: land, shell and MEP

Civil works, shell, electrical distribution, cooling plant and commissioning form the second stage, and it is the one Brazilian contractors and equipment suppliers can actually service. The Campinas corridor — Sumaré, Vinhedo, Jundiaí, Osasco — concentrates this stage because land, substations and fibre already coexist there, and because São Paulo state generates roughly 40% of national GDP within a short drive. The construction value attaching to this stage is sized in Global Data Center Construction Market.

Stage three: electrical and mechanical plant

UPS, switchgear, transformers, busway, chillers, CDUs and, increasingly, liquid cooling distribution. This stage converts the capital line item into the engineering specification, and it is where the density transition is felt commercially: a cloud-era hall designed at 8 kW per rack needs roughly an order of magnitude less plant per square metre than an AI hall designed at 60 kW to 1 MW per rack. The global supply picture for power conversion equipment is covered in Global Power Supply Market.

Stage four: the tenant’s own capital

The servers and accelerators are bought by the tenant, not the operator, and that asymmetry dominates the value chain. Ascenty’s 150 MW of signed AI capacity is expected to draw approximately US$5 billion of client equipment spending against the operator’s own US$1.2 billion of facilities capital — roughly four dollars of tenant hardware for every dollar of building. It explains why operators accept thin returns on capital and why they fight for scale: the lease is a claim on a much larger downstream spend.

Stage five: interconnection and the route to market

Fibre, internet exchange presence and submarine cable landings monetise the whole chain. Fortaleza, Rio de Janeiro and Santos are the principal landing points connecting Brazil to North America, Europe and Africa, and the price premium Fortaleza commands over São Paulo in hyperscale leasing — US$208 against US$135 per kW per month — is the rent on that connectivity. Demand-side volume through this stage is treated in Global Cloud Service Market.

Where margin accumulates

Not in construction and not in equipment, both of which are contestable and globally priced. Margin accumulates at the two ends: at the power position, which is scarce and locally granted, and at the interconnection point, which is scarce and geographically fixed. Operators that own both — a grid position behind their own line and a campus beside a cable landing — earn a return that reflects neither their construction skill nor their service quality. The middle of the chain is a pass-through business with a spread.

The chain also carries a policy condition unique to Brazil: under Redata, the electricity that feeds a beneficiary facility must come entirely from renewable or low-emission generation, and water usage effectiveness must not exceed 0.05 L/kWh. Those are procurement obligations placed on stage one and stage three of the chain respectively, and they change what counts as a compliant supplier.

Investment Activity

Investment activity

Capital committed to Brazilian digital infrastructure has moved from credible to implausible in three years, and the useful task is separating the two.

The official numbers

The Ministry of Mines and Energy puts 7.1 GW of structured, advanced-stage projects behind R$159 billion of expected investment, with a further R$114.5 billion attached to projects already under construction. Those two figures differ in kind, not in size: the first is an intention with an access award, the second is steel in the ground. The independent reporting of the ministry’s 1 June 2026 briefing confirms both, and the energy trade press records the same pair of figures.

What a megawatt costs

Ascenty’s May 2026 announcement prices the marginal megawatt better than any aggregate: US$1.2 billion for 150 MW of AI-ready, pre-leased capacity, or US$8.0 million per megawatt. That is a greenfield AI benchmark, with direct-to-chip liquid cooling and closed-loop water systems. The base case in this report implies USD 4.12 million of capital per megawatt added across the forecast window, which is lower because it blends brownfield expansion, fit-out of existing shells and greenfield campuses. The gap between USD 8.0 million and USD 4.12 million is the difference between building for accelerators and building for everything else, and it is the single most useful check on any announced pipeline: multiply megawatts by USD 8 million if the site is described as AI-ready.

Investment is moving into the grid, not just the campus

The largest single reallocation of capital in this market is outside the data centre fence. The Energy Research Company’s recommended solution for electro-intensive loads in Ceará and Piauí — a new 500 kV substation and approximately 1,848 km of transmission lines to release up to 4 GW from 2032 — carries an estimated cost of about R$5.68 billion, of which only about R$1.09 billion is recommended in the initial year, with the remaining R$4.59 billion conditioned on load actually materialising (detailed analysis). Staging the network against evidence of demand is the central design problem, and the government reports contracting R$100 billion of transmission lines between 2023 and mid-2026 on the strength of it.

Mergers, acquisitions and the transfer of positions

Strategic activity is currently about acquiring grid positions rather than acquiring operators. Casa dos Ventos bought access rights at Pecém, Ceará from Voltalia to underwrite green hydrogen and data centre development — a transaction in which the valuable asset was the connection, not the land. At the corporate level, the Ascenty vehicle is itself a joint venture between Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure, and the concentration of ownership behind Brazil’s four largest platforms is international infrastructure capital rather than domestic industry capital. That matters for behaviour: international infrastructure funds underwrite contracted revenue with 10 to 15 year horizons, which is precisely the tenor of both a hyperscale lease and a transmission concession, and it is why the same balance sheet will fund both.

What the second half of 2026 told us

Deliveries in the first half of 2026 reached 106 MW, of which 75 MW came from Campinas and 31 MW from São Paulo and Barueri, with a further 134 MW scheduled before year-end. 2026 is a record delivery year on any measure. The investment attached to that second-half tranche has been reported at approximately US$8 billion, a figure that is only reconcilable with the megawatts if it includes tenant equipment and campus-wide works rather than facility capital alone — another reminder that headline investment numbers in this sector are not consistently scoped.

The direction of travel is not in doubt: investment trend is rising, capital intensity is high, and the constraint on the next US$10 billion is a substation, not a tenant.

Technology & Innovation

Technology and innovation

Two technical transitions are running at once, and they meet at the rack.

The density transition

Cloud-era halls were designed around 8 kW per rack. AI-ready halls are being specified between 60 kW and 1 MW per rack — a range Ascenty’s executives put on the record for their new campuses, and one corroborated by operator specifications elsewhere in the market: Cirion’s RIO2 campus in São Cristóvão, Rio de Janeiro, is designed to support 30 kW to 126 kW per rack with liquid cooling and up to 100 MW of electrical infrastructure in 2 MW modular blocks when it opens in 2027 (Cirion).

Air cannot carry that. The consequence is that liquid cooling stopped being an option and became a design premise: direct-to-chip cold plates at rack level, coolant distribution units on the hall floor, and rear-door heat exchangers as a transitional step. It changes the capital structure of a build, because mechanical plant per megawatt rises even as compute per square metre rises faster.

The water transition

Evaporative cooling consumed water at a rate that made the technology politically exposed long before it became commercially awkward. Closed-loop liquid systems break the link: the coolant charge is filled once and recirculated, so make-up water approaches zero. Ascenty reports water usage effectiveness of zero across its estate and notes that its Vinhedo campus consumed, in 2025, no more than the equivalent of nine four-person households — and that entirely through washrooms and drinking fountains rather than cooling.

This is now a regulatory threshold rather than a sustainability preference. Law 15.504 requires Redata beneficiaries to demonstrate water usage effectiveness of 0.05 L/kWh or better, measured annually. A conventional evaporative plant cannot meet that; a closed-loop plant meets it by construction. The effect is to make the cooling choice a condition of the tax regime.

Power efficiency and the honest number

Ascenty projects power usage effectiveness of 1.45 for its new AI buildings. That is a good figure for a high-density hall and a reminder that the efficiency debate has moved on: with rack density rising by an order of magnitude, the facility overhead is no longer where the energy goes. The dominant variable is now what the tenant installs. Global data centre electricity consumption was about 485 TWh in 2025 on International Energy Agency figures cited by LAWINFRA’s chief executive, with a path towards 980 TWh by 2030 (Times Brasil) — a doubling that is a siting decision in Brazil and a supply crisis elsewhere.

The grid-side transition

The technology that decides the market is not in the data hall. The Energy Research Company is evaluating dynamic line rating, power flow control electronics, reconductoring with high-temperature conductors and battery storage as ways to extract capacity from existing transmission rather than build ahead of uncertain load. Each of these substitutes capital efficiency for construction time, which is exactly the trade a market facing a five-to-seven year line lead time needs to make. Storage’s role in firming high-density load and in deferring network reinforcement is sized in Global Stationary Energy Storage Systems Market.

Innovation intensity

Innovation intensity in the Brazilian market is high and patent activity is low, and the combination is diagnostic rather than contradictory. The technology is imported — cooling architectures, switchgear, accelerators — while the innovation happens in system design, grid integration and the commercial engineering of power positions. Brazil is a fast follower in the data hall and an original in the substation. Maturity is at the growth stage, with 56% of new stock pre-leased. The demand pull comes from the AI layer that this capacity exists to serve, sized in Global Artificial Intelligence Market.

Market Risk

Market risk

Overall risk in this market is high, and it is concentrated in one place: the conversion rate of a very large queue into commissioned capacity.

Risk one: the queue is not demand

The 38 GW of access requests has been filtered to roughly 8 GW of firm requests once technical access criteria are applied, a conversion of 21.05%. Ministry data on the first backbone round is consistent: 52 access requests recorded, 18 approved by ordinance, 34 still under evaluation — a 34.62% approval rate on applications filed. Requests are cheap; transmission is not. Any planning process that reads the top-line number as demand will overbuild, and the cost of overbuilding an anticipatory line is borne by the tariff base, not by the developer who changed its mind.

Risk two: the two clocks

A data centre takes 18 months to two years. A transmission project takes five to seven. The ratio of 3.5 to 4.7 cannot be compressed by financing, because the missing asset belongs to a party that is not the tenant. Where the line cannot be waited for, the operator builds it — Ascenty’s 32 km link from Santa Bárbara d’Oeste to Sumaré, and Renova’s 85 MW beside the Alto Sertão III wind complex at Igaporã — but self-build is only available to operators with the balance sheet and the regulatory standing to obtain an access opinion in their own name.

Risk three: stranded anticipation

If an expansion is dimensioned for a hyperscaler that does not arrive, the asset remains and the cost remains with it. That is why the Ceará and Piauí solution splits into R$1.09 billion recommended now and R$4.59 billion conditioned on load materialising. The design question is not whether to build but how to keep the option to stop. A market that answers it badly will spend the rest of the decade explaining a transmission asset with no load behind it.

Risk four: the fiscal cliff

Redata’s benefits run for five years, but the suspension of PIS/Pasep, Cofins, IPI and import tax on qualifying equipment produces effects only until 31 December 2026, subject to the constitutional tax reform transition. The regime also imposes continuing obligations — 100% renewable or low-emission supply, water usage effectiveness of 0.05 L/kWh or better, at least 10% of effective capacity made available to the domestic market, and 2% of equipment value reinvested in research and development. Failure to meet them means paying the suspended taxes with interest and a late-payment penalty, suspension of benefits, and cancellation after 180 days followed by a two-year bar on re-admission. A tax incentive with a compliance tail is a different instrument from a tax holiday, and the sector’s underwriting has not fully adjusted.

Risk five: geographic dispersion

Concentration cuts both ways. Campinas runs at 1% vacancy and São Paulo and Barueri at 6%, while Porto Alegre runs at 40% and Fortaleza at 25%. A national vacancy rate of 4% hides a market where supply is arriving in the wrong places relative to grid capacity — Porto Alegre grew 1,038% since 2019 from a small base and Campinas 867%, and the second of those growth rates is the one with tenants behind it. Substitution risk is low, because there is no substitute for a data centre; geopolitical exposure is moderate, and has been a net positive for Brazil as capital is redirected from the Middle East. Currency is the unhedged variable: capital is raised in dollars, tariffs are indexed in reais, and a 20% move in the exchange rate is a larger swing than most of the operational risks above.

Regulatory Landscape

Regulatory landscape

Regulatory complexity in this market is high, and it is high for an unusual reason: the rules that decide a data centre’s viability are electricity rules, not technology rules.

Who decides what

The Ministry of Mines and Energy sets policy and publishes the queue statistics that shape investor expectations. The Operator of the National Interconnected System (ONS) issues access opinions and runs the access process. The Energy Research Company (EPE) plans expansion and publishes the studies that determine where transmission capacity appears. The National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL) regulates tariffs and concessions, and the Electricity Commercialisation Chamber (CCEE) clears the free market. A data centre developer must hold a position in each of these systems, and none of them moves at the speed of a construction programme.

PNAST: from queue to seasons

The National Policy for Access to the Transmission System (PNAST), instituted in 2025, replaced first-come-first-served queuing with analysis in batches, selecting by technical and competitive criteria. Its stated purposes are to secure rational use of the grid, give investors predictability and give sectoral planning a more realistic view of future needs on the interconnected system. The first 2026 access season ran a 15-day registration window from 1 June 2026, and where applications compete for grid points with excess capacity, a competitive access process runs from 28 September to 8 October 2026. Consumers, self-producers and generators seeking permanent access to the basic grid, or an increase in contracted use, may apply.

The practical consequence for a 38 GW queue is that the queue is now allocated in tranches with dates, and an application that misses a window waits for the next one. That is an improvement on a disorderly queue and a new form of timing risk for developers.

Redata: Law 15.504 of 15 September 2026

The Special Tax Regime for Data Centre Services (Redata) was created by Provisional Measure 1.318/2025, which lapsed without a Senate vote after passing the Chamber of Deputies, and returned as bill PL 278/2026. It was enacted as Law 15.504 of 15 September 2026, amending Law 11.196/2005 and published in an extraordinary edition of the Official Gazette (full text; Presidency legislative record). The act was signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and countersigned by the Ministries of Human Rights and Citizenship and of Mines and Energy.

The regime suspends PIS/Pasep, Cofins, PIS/Pasep-Importação, Cofins-Importação, IPI and import tax on domestic purchases and imports of electronic components and ICT goods destined for the fixed assets of a qualifying data centre. Suspension converts to a zero rate once the beneficiary has met its commitments and brought the asset into service. Import tax relief is narrower than the rest: it applies only to items with no national equivalent, listed by federal act.

Eligibility carries cumulative commitments, and four of them are commercially decisive:

• 10% domestic supply — at least 10% of the effective processing, storage and data handling capacity installed with Redata benefits must be made available to the domestic market, and may not be exported or used in-house in the absence of domestic demand. Alternatively, the beneficiary may substitute a further 10% of equipment value in research, development and innovation spending.
• 100% clean supply — the totality of electricity demand must be met through supply contracts or self-production from renewable or low-emission sources, as defined in regulation.
• Water — water usage effectiveness of 0.05 L/kWh or better, measured annually, with a public sustainability report disclosing WUE, energy sources and other indicators.
• 2% reinvestment — investment equal to 2% of the value of goods purchased or imported with the benefit, in research, development and innovation with scientific and technological institutions, Brazilian teaching entities, public companies with technology funds, or qualified social organisations. At least 40% of these resources must go to the North, Northeast and Centre-West.

Establishments in the North, Northeast and Centre-West, including the areas covered by regional development agencies, have the domestic-supply and reinvestment commitments reduced by 20%. Habilitation and co-habilitation are granted by the Federal Revenue Secretariat. Non-compliance means payment of the suspended taxes with interest and late-payment penalty; failure on the domestic-supply condition triggers suspension of benefits on new acquisitions, automatically converted to cancellation of the habilitation if not remedied within 180 days, with a two-year bar on re-admission for the company and its economic group.

Two timing details matter more than they appear. The benefits have a five-year term, but the tax suspensions on PIS/Pasep, Cofins and IPI produce effects only until 31 December 2026, subject to the transition set by Constitutional Amendment 132/2023 and Complementary Law 214/2025. And a dispute over what qualifies as clean energy — with a business coalition led by Movimento Brasil Competitivo arguing for the inclusion of natural gas, on the grounds that facilities currently rely on diesel generators for backup, as at the TikTok project in Pecém — was resolved in the enacted text in favour of renewable or low-emission sources as defined in regulation rather than by enumerating fuels. The regulation, not the statute, will decide how narrow that definition is.

Adjacent obligations

Environmental licensing at state level governs water abstraction, land use and backup generation emissions, and is the most frequent source of schedule slippage after transmission. State ICMS treatment varies and interacts with the federal regime. Connection to the basic grid carries transmission usage tariffs, and the allocation of network reinforcement costs between developers, distributors and the tariff base is unresolved — the point on which consumer exposure to this build-out ultimately turns.

Sources

• Ministry of Mines and Energy briefing of 1 June 2026, as reported by Eixos, BNamericas, Convergência Digital and Cenário Energia.
• ONS access round: 43 applications accepted, 38 data centres, 7 GW — CanalEnergia.
• Firm-request filtering and global consumption context — Times Brasil / CNBC, interview with Sérgio Leverdi, LAWINFRA.
• EPE transmission study for Ceará and Piauí, staged investment — analysis of the 38 GW queue and grid planning.
• Redata: Lei nº 15.504 de 15 de setembro de 2026, Planalto; Presidency legislative record.
• Operator and market structure data: Ascenty, 28 May 2026; DatacenterDynamics, 28 May 2026; Forbes Brasil on the JLL Data Center Brasil 2026 survey; Cirion RIO2 technical specification.
• Related analysis on Pheonix Research: Global Data Center Construction Market; Global Artificial Intelligence Market; Global Power Supply Market; Global Stationary Energy Storage Systems Market.