Beside the green pastures and sugarcane plantations surrounding the farming town of Porto Feliz is the strange sight of hundreds of blue, silicon panes turned towards the sun. This solar farm, about 150 km (93.2 miles) from Sao Paulo, produces electricity for around 40 homes and small businesses like restaurants and gyms. Such “distributed generation,” or DG, operations are quickly multiplying in Brazil as investors bank on the long hours of strong sunlight across the continent-sized country, a late adopter of solar technology, and enjoy subsidies that have been pared back in countries like the United States. Corporate and private investors are boosting solar panel production in one of Brazil’s few domestic manufacturing industries, as well as driving imports from China. Brazil’s solar […]