Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural

Abstract

CRUZ, Cassiano N. P., MOURAD, Anna L., MORINIGO, Marcos A. et al. Eletrificação rural: benefícios em diferentes esferas. In Procedings of the 5th Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural, 2004, Campinas (SP) [online]. 2004 [cited 09 October 2024]. Available from: <http://www.proceedings.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=MSC0000000022004000100050&lng=en&nrm=iso> .

In the last few decades, there has been a constant migration of rural population to urban areas looking for employment and better quality of life. During the same period, industrial sector grew significantly and became economically more important than the rural sector. Consequently, the industrial sector became government's first development priority. In addition, the energy system was focused on large power plants energy production and high potentials long distance transmissions to large energy consumers, urban centers and industries. Limited efforts were done to provide energy to small and dispersed rural consumers as it seemed to be economically less attractive. This article, therefore, shows the importance of rural electrification over human, economical and social development including its impact across the rural communities' boundaries. While regarded as an important factor for development, rural electrification is, however, a function of many input factors in a mutual dependence relationships, reinforcement and feedback loops. Besides of the evident benefits of increased comfort and satisfaction levels to the rural population, other benefits of rural electrification includes improved access to information and communication medias, agricultural mechanization and consequent improvement of the agricultural productivity. Agricultural sector is an important part of the industrial production chain: each R$ 1,00 invested in rural electrification generates R$ 3,00 along the production chain and increases the consumption of durable goods, Word Bank, Gazeta Mercantil (1999). For the population and urbanization control, rural electrification creates favorable conditions to maintain people in the rural areas as such reducing government expenditures for urban infrastructure which is more expensive than the rural one. Moreover, this reduces incidences of unemployment in big cities as it generates jobs in the rural sector. Implementation of a combined rural electrification and effective economical program would be essential for the development of the rural sector and a country as a whole.

Keywords : Eletrificação rural; benefícios; impactos sociais; industriais; setor público; universalização.