On March 11th 2026, TozziniFreire Advogados hosted the meeting “Recent Trends in Brazilian Energy Disputes: Addressing Liability, Causation, and Damages with Expert Evidence”, bringing together legal and economic experts to discuss the key challenges currently shaping disputes in the Brazilian power sector.
The discussions explored structural and regulatory aspects of the Brazilian electricity market and examined how adverse climate events, regulatory actions, curtailment, hydrological risk, and the energy transition have increasingly led to complex litigation and arbitration. Topics included disputes related to power purchase agreements (PPAs), construction and equipment supply contracts for renewable projects, transmission expansion, distributed generation, energy storage regulation, and compensation mechanisms for generation losses.
Representing TozziniFreire’s Infrastructure and Energy practice, partners Laura Souza and Leonardo Miranda shared insights into regulatory and contractual disputes in the Brazilian energy sector, highlighting recent developments before regulatory agencies and courts. Laura Souza emphasized the challenges arising from new technologies and business models, particularly energy storage and grid usage. According to her, “energy storage is bringing a new layer of regulatory and economic debate in Brazil, particularly around how the use of the grid should be charged and how costs should be shared.”
The arbitration perspective was addressed by Lucas Mejias, partner in TozziniFreire’s Arbitration practice, who discussed dispute resolution trends in large-scale energy and infrastructure projects. “Construction disputes in energy projects can involve extremely complex technical issues and large financial claims, which is why the sector is looking for faster and more efficient dispute resolution mechanisms,” Mejias noted.
A central highlight of the event was the presentation delivered by Kurt Strunk, Vice-President of Charles River Associates (CRA), who shared an international perspective on liability, causation, and damages in energy disputes, emphasizing the growing role of expert evidence in technically complex cases. “Energy disputes increasingly require a combination of economic, technical and regulatory expertise. Independent expert analysis helps tribunals and parties understand complex market dynamics and contractual expectations,” Strunk said.
By combining legal, regulatory, and economic viewpoints, the meeting fostered high-level debate on the evolving dispute landscape of the Brazilian energy sector, particularly in a context of energy transition, infrastructure expansion, and increasing regulatory scrutiny.
Check out below how the meeting was.
