Portugal pledges a decade of solar power development

Portugal’s Minister for the Environment and Energy Transition has been saying all the right things at a conference in Madrid, insisting that Portugal will be carbon neutral by 2050.

João Pedro Matos Fernandes said that the country’s emphasis will be on solar power.

Delegates at the energy transition conference heard that the 2030 goal for Europe’s power consumption from renewable source is 37%, while for Portugal the objective is to reach 47%.

The ‘energy transition in the Iberian market’ conference was organised by the Portuguese Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with KPMG.

Matos Fernandes stressed that “in the next decade” there will be “the greatest effort” so that Portugal, by 2050, can have 100% of the electricity consumed from clean energy sources.

“We are the best structured country in the world to be carbon neutral,” said the pro-oil Environment Minister.

At an earlier climate conference in Marrakech in 2016, the prime minister, António Costa, announced Portugal’s target date to becoming carbon neutral was 2050. The Government then prepared its, “Roadmap for Carbon Neutrality” that s´currently is under public discussion.

Spain’s Secretary of State for Energy José Domínguez Abascal said at the Madrid conference that his country will deliver its, “Integrated Energy and Climate Plan” in Brussels in the next two weeks.