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Pego (Portugal) (AFP) – It’s been a year since white smoke from the cooling towers of the last coal-fired power plant in Portugal abandoned that power source ahead of schedule to rely on renewables.
“My job now is to close the station” in the city of Pego, 120 kilometers northeast of Lisbon, chief operating officer Joao Furtado told AFP as he toured the site, wearing a helmet.
Dim lights and accumulated dust attest to the plant’s discontinuation in November 2021, nearly 30 years after it was put into service.
After the closure of the Sines station, located 90 kilometers south of Lisbon, in early 2021, the government decided not to extend the operation of the Pego station, eight years before the scheduled closure. Portugal next became the fourth country to abandon coal in Europe.
While the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has prompted many European countries to reopen or keep coal-fired power plants in service, the Lisbon government “remains convinced that it is not necessary to reverse this decision” which is “important for the environment,” said Environment Minister Duarte Cordero in mid-September.
Example in Europe
In June, Austria decided to return to the use of coal, which it had abandoned two years earlier.
“Portugal is an example in Europe,” said Pedro Nunes, a renewable energy expert at the Environmental Defense Association Zero, noting that the two coal-fired power plants alone accounted for “about 20 percent” of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
To offset coal’s contribution to electricity production, the government hopes to continue developing green energy sources to generate 80 percent of electricity by 2026, compared to 40 percent in 2017.
While the share of renewable energy in electricity production reached about 60 percent in 2021, this percentage fell to about 40 percent in the first nine months of this year due to the unprecedented drought that caused a decrease in hydropower production.
Pending an increase in its wind and solar capacity, with Portugal ranking eighth and thirteenth respectively in Europe, the country remains highly dependent on fossil fuels (71 percent of total energy in 2020, according to Eurostat).
During this transitional phase, the plan provides “in the first stage to generate electricity in gas-fired power plants, which are one-third less polluting than coal,” Nunes explained.
high imports
Thus, the state has established mixed-cycle natural gas stations, similar to those that have been in service since 2011 at the Peugeot site, along with the old coal-fired power plant, and its operating contract continues until 2035.
Pedro Almeida Fernandez, head of renewable energies at the Portuguese branch of Spain’s Endesa Group, noted that it was “not a coincidence” that Portugal was among the first countries to abandon coal in Europe, as the country has been preparing for an energy transition “for a long time”.
The company won the Peugeot coal-fired plant conversion project by committing to a hybrid plant by 2025 that combines solar, wind and green hydrogen, along with a battery storage system.
Portugal, which enjoys 300 sunny days a year, plans to increase its solar power generation capacity by 50 percent, with a capacity of 3 gigawatts, in 2022 alone, according to government estimates.
However, the early abandonment of coal “was not well prepared”, according to Pedro Nunes.
A year ago, Portugal “significantly increased its electricity imports” from Spain, which, he says, “continues to generate power from coal”.
© 2022 AFP