Portugal has joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance and plans to have closed the country's coal-fired power stations by 2030.
There already are 15 in the group of countries that want to switch from coal as a power source and move to a higher contribution from renewable energies.
Portugal’s commitment was announced by Environment Minister, João Matos Fernandes in Bonn today as Fiji acts as hosts to the 23rd UN summit on climate change (CoP23).
The 'scrap coal' group now has 15 members, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, France, Finland, Holland, UK, Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Chile, Mexico and the Marshall Islands.
The goal is to reach 50 members by the next climate summit in 2018 in Poland.
At CoP22 in Marrakesh last year, Portugal’s Prime Minister, António Costa, committed to reducing ‘decarbonising’ Portugal by 2050 and te Minister of the Environment said in 2015 that the intention is to close the Sines and Pego coal-fired plants by 2030. The Bonn announcement brings this forward by 20 years, "In 2030 there will be no production of electricity in Portugal from coal," with the new deadline credited to the establishment of the Powering Past Coal Alliance.
Environmentalists say that Portugal's power stations that use coal could be decommissioned far earlier, "2021 is a politically, technically and economically feasible date for coal-fired power stations in Portugal to be phased out," says Francisco Ferreira of the Zero group, citing the evolution of technology and the decline in renewable energy prices as catalysts.
Pedro Soares, the Left Bloc’s deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Environment Committee, picked up on this and believes that "the government must set an ambitious target for the end of coal-fired power plants by 2021 in order to accelerate the energy transition to renewables."
Stubbornly resisting the inevitable price disadvantage of coal as renewable energy prices continue to fall, the world’s largest coal users - China, USA, Russia and Germany – remain outside the Powering Past Coal Allliance with Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, pleading that "it is not easy" to meet the commitments to end coal-fired power stations due to "social and job issues."
Merkel admitted that Germany will not meet the commitments made in Paris "to limit the rise in temperatures to 2 or 1.5 degrees Centigrade," and the promises to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by 2020 also "will not be met."
Minister Matos Fernandes believes that the work in setting internationally agreed rules on monitoring and reduction levels is going well but much work needs to be completed if the rules are to be set in 2018.
