Silveira says ministry will request expiration of contract with Enel in São Paulo

Regulatory agency: The power outage after the windstorm in São Paulo puts pressure on Enel, which is in Aneel’s crosshairs in a process that could lead to the end of the concession

• Lack of light: Aneel demands strengthening of emergency plans from distributors in Rio and São Paulo after climate alerts

The minister did not specify when this expiration process will be launched. In practice, Aneel will analyze whether Enel has not complied with the contract and the laws and resolutions that govern the distribution sector and whether it is possible to terminate the contract. After that, it will be up to the agency to vote and give its opinion on the expiration of the concession, but it is the Ministry of Mines and Energy which makes the decision on this breach of contract.

— We are totally united, the federal government, the state government and the municipality of São Paulo, to begin a rigorous regulatory process and we hope that Aneel can respond as quickly as possible to the citizens of São Paulo, beginning the expiration process that will certainly lead to an improvement in the quality of the distribution service, which is the most sensitive service in the Brazilian electricity sector — said Silveira, adding that Enel “lost the conditions to be in charge of the service energy concession in São Paulo”.

Tarcísio said the state had already conducted an investigation into “repeated failures in the provision of services” and that this data had been shared with Aneel and the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

— Enel’s situation in São Paulo is unsustainable, it is no longer able to provide services, it has a very serious reputation problem, it has the problem of constantly letting down our population. We showed graphs showing that in this last event we had 2.2 million customers whose electricity was interrupted and it took almost five days to restore service to most of those consumer units. And this happens repeatedly, there are many failures – added the governor.

Silveira’s speech contradicts the speech adopted by the minister in recent months. Since last year, he has defended the renewal of energy distribution concession contracts in order to avoid new auctions, and that the new contracts will establish stricter rules for companies.

In November, in an interview with Roda Viva, on TV Cultura, Silveira said that “all the deficiencies of Enel” mentioned by the governor and the mayor of the capital “are corrected in the renewal requests.”

• Absence of electrical crisis: Ministry requests resources to create Aneel unit in São Paulo and expand inspection, after power cuts

Last Friday (13), Nunes and Tarcísio spoke briefly with President Lula (PT) during the SBT News launch event and asked for help on the Enel file. Tarcísio requests the intervention of the federal government at the concessionaire, while the mayor has demanded, for at least two years, that the concession be declared expired due to constant distribution problems. Lula then promised that he would send Silveira to speak to the São Paulo government.

Last week, an extratropical cyclone brought winds of nearly 100 kilometers per hour to São Paulo. Trees and poles fell, there was damage in several regions of the state and more than 2.2 million addresses remained without electricity in the 24 municipalities served by Enel, including the capital. On Saturday, four days after the storm, more than 500,000 customers were still without electricity and, this Monday (15), some places were still affected, such as a restaurant in Pinheiros, in the West zone, as a report from GLOBO shows.

• A week in the dark: the drama of those who remain without electricity in São Paulo

Enel’s delay in restoring service to customers has been, once again, the target of criticism from the mayor of the capital and the governor, who denounce the concessionaire’s inefficiency in energy distribution and demand action from the federal government. Indeed, the electricity distribution concession falls under federal jurisdiction.

Enel has been responsible for the distribution of electricity to 24 municipalities in the São Paulo metropolitan region, a total of 8.5 million customers, since 2018, when the Italian company purchased Eletropaulo. But since 2023, the dealership has become the epicenter of crises due to power outages that have affected millions of people in the country’s most populous city. Large-scale power outages occurred in November 2023, October 2024, and September and December 2025.

The company is subject to an inspection process by the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), which requires improvements in the company’s indicators, notably to reduce the average response time to emergency events, reduce interruptions of 24 hours or more and improve the mobilization capacity of teams in the event of extreme weather events. Last month, Aneel decided to extend the inspection deadline until March 2026, to assess how the service will be provided during the rainy season – in São Paulo, usually between December and February.