'Latin America's biggest green energy port': ex-Vestas boss Zampronha has offshore wind and hydrogen in sights
Prumo's CEO and former regional boss for turbine giant claims he is on to something special at Brazil's Acu
Rogerio Zampronha, a former Latin America president of wind turbine giant Vestas, is steering the region's biggest private port complex along a path he believes will turn it into a reference point for the energy transition in Brazil.
As chief executive of Prumo Logistica, Zampronha leads a Brazilian joint venture between two of the world’s biggest investment funds, Washington DC-based private equity firm EIG (60%) and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala Investment Co (40%).
Prumo has built up a whole investment portfolio around its flagship asset, the sprawling Port of Acu industrial complex in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
At first sight the fast-growing facility seems more geared to traditional commodity and energy industries than the energy transition.
In its first phase of development Acu provided a new logistical gateway for China-bound exports of iron ore, acting through Ferroport, a joint venture with mining giant Anglo American.
Ferroport’s marine export facility shares a sheltered deep-water terminal with another Prumo subsidiary, Vast, which handles the transshipment operations for 37% of Brazil’s crude exports.
The scale of operations means Port of Acu has moved into second place among Brazilian ports in terms of tonnnage only nine years after starting operations, Zampronha enthuses.
The port hosts a clutch oil and gas contractors, including TechnipFMC, McDermott and runs a busy 17-berth terminal for offshore support vessels. This last facility, operated by US company Edison Chouest, provides an inkling of why Zampronha has broader ambitions.
'Offshore wind-ready'
"Offshore wind projects here will all be in shallow waters, with bottom-fixed monopiles. If you look at the types of vessels needed for support, installation and construction offshore, we already have about three-quarters of them working here at Acu," he notes.
“What I see as we building our business is that the Port of Acu has an enviable and unique position to be the leading port base for the energy transition not just in Brazil, but for the whole of Latin America."
Ahead of this promised transition, the port has a receiving terminal for cargoes of liquefied natural gas which feed into Latin America’s biggest gas-fired thermoelectric complex.
The facility – which has a 1.3GW power station in operation and a 1.7GW plant under construction – falls under a joint venture that Prumo forged with UK supermajor BP, Germany’s Siemens and China’s SPIC.
From gas to green
In its most recent move, Port of Acu signed an agreement with the Japanese-led Toyo-Setal joint venture outlining plans for a $2-$3bn ammonia and urea fertiliser plant in the port complex.
Brazil is one of the biggest producers and exporters of agricultural commodities in the world but imports about 90% of its nitrogen fertilisers, some of which are already handled by Port of Acu.
In a first phase, blue ammonia will be produced at Acu with natural gas produced from Brazil’s offshore oil fields and – as part of that plan – a tender is under way to select the company to build an onshore pipeline from the Cabiunas receiving terminal to the south-west.
Domestic gas is expected to start arriving by the end of 2026, with operations beginning in 2027, but Prumo also has big plans for developing offshore wind, green hydrogen , as well as biofuels and longer term plans for the fertilisers plant include migrating the production system to one based on green ammonia.
Wind potential
Acu’s location in a southeastern region which accounts for 54% of Brazil's gross domestic product, with proximity to one of Brazil's three sweet spots for offshore wind.
Some 34GW of offshore wind projects have already been mapped out there and submitted to Brazil's federal environmental agency even before a regulatory framework for the sector makes its way through Congress.
Zampronha does his best to explain why rival offshore patches in the northeast and south of Brazil are not a match for the southeast.
As well as the on-site fleet of logistics vessels, he points to expansive quays able to handle the biggest turbines and vast adjacent areas for fabrication and logistics investments.
Wind capacity is considered better in the south-east than in the south, where it tends to be stronger but gustier.
Zampronha says the north-eastern states such as Rio Grande do Norte and Ceara offer marginally better wind capacity, but he argues that limited markets in those regions and grid congestion meant that reaching the key south and southeastern regions will be more expensive and environmentally disruptive than the proposed offshore wind projects on his own doorstep.
"Capex for offshore wind offshore from Acu will be one of the lowest in world because all the infrastructure is here and renewable energy can be connected directly to the grid in the country's biggest market. You don't have the problems of access to transmission lines or cost differentials that onshore wind producers are facing today in the north-east," he claims.
The port’s own greenfield characteristics are attracting potential partners in renewable energy businesses.
“This is not a place where you see old refineries and processing plants facing transition. this is a place where we can build the future of energy transition, and this is exactly what we intend to do,” says Zampronha.
Hydrogen chain
Port of Acu has applied for permitting to build a 4GW green hydrogen production facility to provide sustenance to a string of agreements with international partners.
Potential joint venture partners include Neoenergia, which is 53% owned by Spanish utility Iberdrola (offshore wind and green hydrogen), Shell and Linde (both green hydrogen) and TotalEnergies, SPIC and EDF Renewables (offshore wind), among others.
A selling point for Acu, is the determination of its backers to build integrated industries in the facilities offering competitive behind-the-metre energy options for on site consumption, Zampronha states.
"Our business plan is to green incorporate hydrogen within a range of products for established markets, such as steel or fertilisers based on green ammonia," Zampronha states.
Targeted markets include hot briquetted iron used by electric arc furnace methods for steel making .
The green ammonia project similarly seeks to address the anomaly that Brazil, an agricultural giant, currently imports more than 90% of its nitrogen fertilisers. "There is very strong market potential for producing fertilisers here, and tackling the carbon footprint in the process," Zampronha says.
Plans for green hydrogen also include the use of flow waters from the Ferroport pipeline that brings iron ore to the port from the hinterlands of Minas Gerias for electrolysis which Zampronha reckons will make it "the greenest hydrogen on the planet."
Spanner in the works?
All this potential could come to nothing, Zampronha admits, if Brazilian lawmakers do not move more decisively toward approving a bill that creates a regulatory framework for offshore wind and hydrogen.
While the bill currently before Congress is not perfect — in particular proponents want it to look less like the legislation that governs the licensing of royalty-paying concessions for the oil and gas sector — but the main concern is that the legislative process gets moving.
Apart from its ambitions for behind-the-grid customers, Prumo's own research shows capacity at the port to connect 3.5GW into the grid locally "without reinforcement or new transmission lines.
"This governments wants to re-industrialise Brazil. Where else can you find big quantities of gas and the prospect of major generation from offshore wind close to consumers, with ample port areas for import, export and even the biggest logistics operations,?" he asks.
"Brazilian society is asked to pay to subsidise solar energy and distribute electricity, but we could pay less for big volumes of renewable electricity feeding energy intensive projects onshore as well as feeding in to the south-east grid without the need for big investments and envirnmental impacts of a 2000 kilometre transmission line! This is the logic of why I think we should have offshore wind as soon as possible in Brazil," the Prumo boss argues.
Big biogas ambitions
In an emerging line of business Prumo is also understood to be talking to potential partners about a major biogas project, using biomass from the many degraded sugarcane plantations in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro state to to make products such as green ethanol, sustainable aviation fuel or green LNG.