The launch of Solara4 took place this Wednesday in Alcoutim:
"This will be the largest solar park in Europe without a subsidised tariff and without placing a burden on consumers, in line with the new guidelines of the national energy policy," said the Secretary of State for Energy, Jorge Seguro Sanches.
The €200 million photovoltaic power station will provide up to 200 megawatts (MW), according to projections in the environmental impact study.
This is all part of the government’s recent approval of, "380 megawatts of photovoltaic solar energy in the southern region of the country, without subsidised tariffs and without being paid for by consumers," according to the Secretary of State for Energy.
The Government says the end of the tariff subsidy is a way of halting the €5 billion-a-year cost of supporting solar power producers - even though they contributed only 1.4% to national power consumption last year.
The Portuguese Association of Renewable Energies forecasts that the installed capacity in Portugal of photovoltaic solar energy will grow 20 times by 2030.
It remains to be seen whether the government wants clean solar power alongside oil production from the Alentejano and Algarve coasts or whether by pushing solar and other renewable power production technologies, it gradually will go off the idea of oil production and give anti-oil activists a well-earned rest.
The Alcoutim plant is owned by China Triumph International Engineering in conjunction with Welink, a British company meaning that profits from this venture will flow out of the country.
The project, covering 600 hectares with 2.4 million photovoltaic panels, is in the parishes of Martinlongo and Vaqueiros, Alcoutim and will start to be constructed in April with a compleion date of two years.
The Environmental organisation, Almargem, has reservations as it claims the project may not yet be licensed, even though it was launched today, and thus could be illegal.
In 2015, Almargem issued an unfavorable opinion on the Alcoutim Photovoltaic Power Plant, as it was called then, which was totally ignored by the Commission for Environmental Impact Assessment of the Portuguese Environmental Agency.
The Commission said that this had been "an error" but refused to restart the evaluation process to incorporate environmentalists’ views.
Almargem says it supports renewable energy production systems but that “for every situation, it is necessary to weigh up all the pros and cons.”
“In a territory such as the Algarve, it is preferable to deploy smaller solar power plants in abandoned or non-conservation agricultural areas near the place of consumption where everyone can benefit and the negative impacts are considerably reduced.”
One of Almargem’s points is to do with the plant interrupting a section of the Via Algarviana between Vaqueiros and Furnazinhas which will deter walkers from this area, with consequent repercussions for the local economy.
The Environmental Impact Statement’s "conditionally favorable opinion" states that before the project is licensed, there should be "solutions for the landscape integration of the Via Algarviana and minimisation of visual impacts for users. Contact with the entities that look after the Via Algarviana should be initiated in order to establish measures that minimise the visual impact of that section."
The “entities that guard the Via Algarviana" is Almargem which has never been contacted by anyone involved, showing yet again that the government simply ignores any opinion that does not accord with its own.
