"Brazil communities accuse companies of ‘green grabbing’ for wind energy", 07 March 2025

...Jeane Da Gama Costa, 42, grew up in Umburanas, a small municipality of Bahia...

Decades later, Jeane’s house is surrounded by some 80 wind turbines, including one within her own property, she says. A labyrinth of roads connects the towers while transmission lines snake from one corner of a field to another. In less than a decade, the area went from a desolate landscape to becoming a major 450 million euro ($474 million) wind park. 

The park is owned by Enel, a major Italian energy company with hundreds of Brazilian subsidiaries. Jeane and more than a dozen residents in the area claim that Enel and Maestro Holding de Energia, a Brazilian energy company, stripped them of their territory in order to pursue their renewable energy objectives. 

Daniel Carneiro, a lawyer representing these residents in lawsuits against the companies, says Maestro and Enel’s actions amount to a pernicious form of “land-grabbing.” Enel and Maestro Holding deny these claims.

Jeane’s case is part of a much wider trend that experts label as “green grabbing,” a process by which energy companies obtain access to large swaths of common land to produce clean renewable energy...

Enel relies on local intermediary companies known as “developers” to handle the often-contentious process of securing land access. These companies often employ aggressive tactics to strike contracts with local landowners and acquire public land occupied by residents, the investigative team has found. They then lease these territories to Enel to build wind or solar parks on...

“The company strictly complies with legal requirements, industry regulations and complies with all environmental requirements,” Enel’s press office in São Paulo tells this investigation. “In accordance with Brazilian law, Enel does not purchase land in Brazil. The areas where the company installs wind turbines or solar panels are private properties with a regular attestation of regularity from the point of view of land ownership.” Enel Italia, contacted with the same questions, did not respond...

“Enel obviously knows … what is happening and in fact engages with contractors to whom it delegates the dirty work,” says an Enel employee, who preferred to remain anonymous...

As of today, Enel has more than 1,000 wind turbines active or under construction...