Portuguese 
The BEL1 is expected to start operations in 2027 in the Miramar port area. The company aims to reduce the North Region’s dependency on servers in São Paulo and Miami, while authorities check the project’s impact on local temperatures.
The first artificial intelligence-focused data center in the Amazon is set to be constructed in the Miramar port area, in the Barreiro neighborhood of Belém, and it is already under investigation by the Public Ministry of Pará for the risk of creating heat islands and the lack of environmental licensing and public consultations, according to a report published by g1 Pará on August 9, 2026, authored by Taymã Carneiro. The project, named BEL1 and handled by Elea Data Centers, is estimated to cost R$ 250 million (about US$ 50 million).
The project is scheduled to begin operations in the second quarter of 2027, starting with a capacity of 7.5 megawatts, with plans for expansion up to 100 megawatts. The ongoing debate surrounding it encompasses two issues that do not have clear answers in Brazil: the thermal impact of these installations and the complete absence of specific environmental regulations for them.
What is a data center and why does it generate heat?
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Before delving into the controversy, it’s essential to understand the subject matter. Data centers are facilities that house thousands of supercomputers. To process vast amounts of data, these machines consume a lot of electricity and continuously generate heat without pause.
This is why cooling systems are the core of their operation. Every data center relies on cooling systems to remove heat from within the equipment, and that heat has to go somewhere. Heat does not vanish; it is transferred to the outside environment, and this is precisely the point of contention being discussed in Belém.
For the BEL1, Elea has indicated it will use air conditioning instead of water, a system known as direct expansion, which is quite common in industrial refrigeration of this type of facility.
Is 7.5 megawatts a lot or a little?
The initial figure seems modest until it is translated into household consumption. According to data from the Energy Research Company, linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the 7.5 megawatts in the first phase would be enough to power more than 22,500 residences in the North Region.
And this is just the starting phase. The company anticipates expanding to up to 100 megawatts, which would multiply the project’s energy demand by over thirteen times. A 100-megawatt data center would consume the equivalent energy of an entire mid-sized city. There is no set date for this second phase to come into fruition.
The scale explains why experts consulted for this report consider the case relevant even at this initial stage. What is at stake is not just what will be built in 2027, but what the structure could become afterward.
The Public Ministry’s Inquiry
The investigation was opened by prosecutor Márcio Maués from the 1st Public Prosecutor’s Office of Barcarena. The civil inquiry seeks to investigate the legality of the installation and the risks associated with what he classifies as climate damage, in addition to the absence of environmental licensing and public consultations.
The prosecutor’s stance demands a technical demonstration, rather than a veto to the project. He states that it is not enough to declare that the venture will not have consequences or to claim that it will be good for the region: this must be technically proven. Regarding the magnitude of the effect, he himself notes that he does not believe in a 9-degree increase in Belém, but insists on demonstrating whether there will be an increase in temperature and to what extent.
His main criticism is about the order of events. Maués feels that the project is already established and that the licensing stages are being treated as mere formalities.
The Cambridge Study and What It Actually Measures
The Public Ministry’s concern is based on a study conducted by scientists affiliated with the University of Cambridge. The research used satellite data from NASA to monitor the Earth’s surface temperature around thousands of artificial intelligence data centers worldwide, from 2004 to 2024.
The main result is an average increase of 2.07 degrees Celsius in surface temperature shortly after the operations of these structures begin. The variation ranges from 0.3 degrees to 9.1 degrees in extreme cases, with most measurements concentrated between 1.5 and 2.4 degrees. The thermal effect can extend up to 10 kilometers, but loses intensity quickly with distance: the average soil warming is about 1 degree within a radius of up to 4.5 kilometers. Researchers estimate that over 340 million people live within this range around some of these facilities worldwide.
Two technical caveats accompany the study and are relevant to the discussion. The work was released as a preprint, meaning it has not yet undergone peer review. The variable measured is the Earth’s surface temperature, captured by satellites, which is not the same as the air temperature experienced by someone walking on the street. NASA itself defines surface temperature as how warm the ground, roof, or treetops would feel to the touch, a measurement that is strongly influenced by the type of material present. Critics of the methodology point out that replacing vegetation with concrete and equipment already elevates the satellite readings, regardless of the heat generated by processing.
The Island of the Jaguars and the Consultation That Didn’t Happen
One of the most concrete points of the inquiry is not thermal but procedural. According to the Public Ministry, riverside communities in the surrounding areas were not consulted as required by the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, which addresses prior consultation with traditional populations.
The Island of the Jaguars is located just 4.5 kilometers from the planned installation site, exactly within the radius where the Cambridge study indicates an average soil warming of around 1 degree. There was also no public consultation with residents of the neighborhoods of Miramar, Barreiro, Sacramenta, and Pratinha, all of which are close to the land.
A resident of Sacramenta, entrepreneur and environmentalist Murilo Monteiro, states that he has been following the discussions and claims that so far there has been no communication directed to the local community or institutions operating in the territory. For him, this lack of dialogue raises questions and highlights the need to enhance transparency and social participation from the initial phases of the project.
The Company’s Response
The founder and president of Elea, Italian Alessandro Lombardi, argues that deeper thermal impact studies will only be conducted for the 100 megawatt phase. Regarding the current stage, he states that the suggestion to engage with the community should be considered when constructing a larger data center, but not at this project stage, which he claims has no impact.
He compares it to a commercial venture. Lombardi asserts that the facility will resemble a mid-sized shopping center, and such an establishment consumes more heat than the data center planned for the initial phase.
In a statement, Elea informed that the environmental licenses and other authorizations are being requested within legal deadlines and procedures, that the project is being implemented in a private industrial area within the technology center of Axia Energia, and that the schedule remains contingent on fulfilling all licensing stages and approvals from the relevant authorities. The company also declared that it is developing a strategy for engaging with surrounding communities, planning to map local leaders, present the project, and create permanent dialogue channels. It stated that it has not been formally notified by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and is available for clarifications.
The Noise No One Measured
Beyond heat, there is another impact noted by experts. Researcher Juliano Ximenes from the Federal University of Pará states that maintaining continuous cooling for these machines may cause severe noise pollution.
The numbers he presents expose the gap between local regulations and the realities observed in other countries. The Complementary Law on Urban Control in Belém limits noise to 65 decibels, while surrounding data centers worldwide can reach 96 decibels. The decibel scale is logarithmic, meaning this difference represents a sound many times more intense than the numerical reading suggests.
Lombardi counters by stating that the project includes noise reduction mechanisms, and that the occasional noise stems from diesel generators rather than the data center itself. According to him, these generators have emissions measured in decibels, there is specific legislation on this matter, and mitigation for these noises is accounted for in the project.
The Brazilian Regulatory Void
The aspect that gives the case national significance is the lack of rules. In Brazil, there are no specific regulations for data center installations; that is, there are no laws or environmental guidelines tailored to assess the energy and heat impacts of such technology.
The licensing situation in Belém is as follows. The Belém Environmental Agency reported, in an official letter from July 2026, that there is no ongoing environmental licensing process for the enterprise, and thus, there are no neighborhood impact studies or environmental impact reports. The State Environmental Agency of Pará also stated that it has no licensing process underway. The National Electric Energy Agency declared that it does not adopt special treatment for AI data centers and is still examining possible requirements related to electric grid infrastructure. The National Electric System Operator was contacted regarding the potential impact of the 100 megawatt load on the local grid but did not respond.
Elea, for its part, claims to be following the general licensing procedures applicable to large energy consumers, as there is no specific process for the sector.
Where the Energy Comes From
The land and electricity come from the same source. The data center will be situated in a rented area within the property of Axia Energia, a generator and supplier operating in Pará with infrastructure comprising 81 plants and accounting for 17% of the country’s generation capacity.
The energy will be purchased directly from the supplier, without involving the National Interconnected System, according to both companies. The choice of location was described by Elea’s president as strategic due to its proximity to the Miramar substation, managed by Axia, formerly Eletrobras and Eletronorte.
The energy argument presented by Lombardi reverses the usual interpretation. He argues that the North region produces a significant amount of renewable hydropower and that the lack of a stable, large-scale consumer can lead to imbalance and instability in the local grid. In this view, the data center wouldn’t be an additional burden on the system; rather, it would be a predictable load for an existing generation.
What BEL1 Will Process
The company’s technical justification for the project is based infrastructure. According to Elea, the data center will serve as a catalyst to expand access to artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital services in the North region, bringing processing closer to users and reducing dependence on servers in other regions and abroad.
The practical point is the physical route of the data. Currently, operations such as a Pix or accessing a medical record in the North depend on a long journey: information travels overland to São Paulo, then via submarine cables to Miami, in the United States, before returning to Pará. This path creates delays and makes the connections vulnerable to outages, according to the company.
The building will host infrastructure to process banking transactions such as TEDs and Pix, electronic hospital records, and systems for the Court of Justice, as well as support signals for 4G and 5G operators. Users will be large anchor clients, including technology and cloud companies, whose names the company keeps confidential.
Who Benefits from the Innovation
There is a third position in the debate, which is neither a veto nor unconditional support. Professor Marcus Braga from the Federal Rural University of the Amazon and a computer scientist approaches the topic as a matter of digital sovereignty, asserting that artificial intelligence is the new electricity and that the current world cannot live without it anymore.
He sees the installation as a technological pivot opportunity for a state where internet access in the interior is still precarious. However, he proposes a concrete countermeasure to avoid what he calls technological extractivism, a situation in which Pará would simply provide the space without any return. His suggestion is that the state should require capacity reserves, for example, 10% of processing load, for use in strategic sectors such as health and environmental monitoring.
On the other side of the same concern, Juliano Ximenes argues that the lack of clarity reinforces the urgency of regulating the use of artificial intelligence and demanding transparency from transnational companies, at the risk that neo-extractivism could open new degraded real and virtual spaces.
A City That Is Already One of the Hottest in the Country
The local climatic context is what gives specific weight to the discussion. A survey by g1 showed that Belém was the second Brazilian city with the highest number of days afflicted by atypical heat in 2024.
Ximenes adds that data center structures dissipate energy in the form of heat and raise external temperatures in an area that frequently already records thermal sensations of 34 degrees Celsius (93.2 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher, creating what he calls heat islands.
This intersection makes the case of Belém a test. On one hand, there is the demand for digital infrastructure in a region that currently relies on servers located thousands of kilometers away. On the other, the installation of a structure that continuously dissipates heat in one of the hottest cities in the country, without any regulations in Brazil designed to measure this impact.
What do you think? Should Pará require compensations and studies before allowing the data center, or does the risk of losing the investment and continuing to depend on servers in Miami weigh more? Share in the comments what condition you believe should be mandatory for such a project.
