For a year now, white smoke has not escaped from the two cooling towers of Portugal’s last coal-fired power station. This Iberian country gave up this energy source earlier than expected and is banking on renewables.
“My job today is to shut down the power plant” in Pego, 120 km northeast of Lisbon, chief operator Joao Furtado told AFP, walking around with a flashlight in his hand and a helmet. security on the head.
The extinguished neon lights and the accumulating dust testify to the shutdown of the plant in November 2021, almost 30 years after it entered operation.
After the closure at the start of 2021 of the Sines power station, located 90 km south of Lisbon, the government decided not to extend the activity of the Pego power station and, eight years ahead of schedule, Portugal then became the fourth country in Europe to abandon coal.
While the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has prompted several European countries to reopen or keep coal-fired power plants in operation, the Lisbon government “remains convinced that it will not be necessary to reconsider this decision”, judged ” important for the environment”, assured in mid-September the Minister of the Environment Duarte Cordeiro.
– “An example in Europe” –
Austria decided in June to reconnect with coal after having given up on it two years earlier.
“Portugal is an example in Europe”, welcomes Pedro Nunes, specialist in renewable energies within the association for the defense of the environment Zero, recalling that the two coal-fired power stations alone represented “nearly 20%” the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
To replace the contribution of coal in the production of electricity, the government hopes to continue to develop its green energies to draw 80% of its electricity from them by 2026, against 40% in 2017.
If the share of renewables in electricity production had reached almost 60% in 2021, this figure fell to around 40% in the first nine months of this year due to a historic drought which caused a drop in electricity production. ‘Hydro-electric power.
While waiting to increase its wind and solar energy production capacity, where Portugal only ranks 8th and 13th in Europe respectively, the Iberian country remains very dependent on fossil fuels (71% of the total energy mix in 2020 according to Eurostat).
During this transition phase, the strategy passes “initially by the production of electricity in gas-fired power stations, which are a third less polluting than coal”, notes Pedro Nunes of the Zero association.
– Imports up –
The country has thus equipped itself with natural gas-fired combined-cycle power plants, such as the one that has been operational since 2011 on the Pego site, next to the old coal-fired power plant, and whose operating contract runs until 2035.
“It is no coincidence” that Portugal is among the first to have abandoned coal in Europe, because the country has been preparing its energy transition “for a long time”, underlines Pedro Almeida Fernandes, head of renewable energies of the Portuguese subsidiary of the Spanish group Endesa.
It was this company that won the project to convert the Pego coal-fired power station by committing to create by 2025 a mixed fleet combining solar, wind and green hydrogen energy, together with a battery storage system. .
Renowned for its 300 days of sunshine a year, Portugal plans to increase its solar power generation capacity by 50%, to 3 gigawatts, in 2022 alone, according to a government estimate.
Nevertheless, according to Professor Pedro Clemente Nunes, a specialist in energy issues at the Technical University of Lisbon, the anticipated abandonment of coal was “poorly prepared”.
Over the past year, Portugal has “significantly increased its electricity imports” from neighboring Spain which, he observes, “continues to produce energy from coal”.
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