Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, will offer cut-rate loans to solar developers building utility-scale projects that use a certain amount of locally produced content. With annual interest rates of 7.4-9.9% — roughly six percentage points lower than comparable private finance in the recession-hit country — this is financing that every developer would like to get its hands on.
But as part of these local-content requirements, developers will have to buy solar modules assembled in Brazil — and there are currently no module assembly plants in the country.
