ELETROBRAS
TOP 10 – HYDROPOWER COMPANIES
ELETROBRAS
FOUNDED: 1962 HEADQUARTERS: RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL CEO: IVAN MONTEIRO EMPLOYEES: 8,300 INSTALLED CAPACITY: 44.6GW
Eletrobras sits at the centre of Brazil’ s power system and is one of the most influential hydropower-heavy utilities anywhere in the world.
Its scale gives it a structural role in a country where water power has long formed the backbone of electricity supply, helping to support both reliability and decarbonisation.
What makes Eletrobras particularly impressive is its importance to Brazil’ s wider energy system. It helps balance a grid that has to serve a vast geography, changing demand patterns and an increasingly complex clean-energy mix.
The Itaipu dam, co-owned with Paraguay and long counted among Eletrobras’ s key assets, held the record as the world’ s largest operational hydropower plant for decades – a symbol of just how central water power has been to Brazil’ s development story.
As Brazil becomes more involved in conversations of the energy transition, Eletrobras is likely to be one of the key institutions shaping how hydropower, transmission and system stability work together. 44 June 2026
WATCH NOW
The Itaipu dam – the giant that powers two nations
The Itaipu dam in Brazil