Last year’s drought in Portugal led to a decrease in the production of renewable energy, down 14.5% compared to 2014.
Despite this slowdown, the production of electricity from renewable sources accounted for the majority of electricity produced in Portugal, some 50.4%, the rest coming from fossil fuels.
The data released today by the Portuguese Renewable Energy Association (APREN) shows photovoltaic solar energy as having had a big increase in installed capacity with 10% more PV panels now in operation.
Photovoltaic energy is still the poor relation in the overall family as its share of the total energy produced from renewable sources is just 1.6% in a country where sunshine is abundant.
Energy produced from windmills, at 22.5% was for the first time was ahead of hydro-power at 19.1%.
In the third place, was biomass with a 5.1% share of renewables production.
Portugal sold less power abroad in 2015, with exports falling 40% compared to 2014 but the renewable production figure has enabled savings of €1.1 billion by not having to buy imported fossil fuels to keep the country's power stations running.
As for those power stations, pretty much dependent on imports, coal accounted for 27.1% of electricity production, up from 24%, followed by gas at 10.4% - an uncomfortable increase of over 200%.
APREN warns that the 2020 European targets for renewable energy production are at risk after recent years have seen "a weakening of national policy and strategy" in the renewables sector, largely due to behind-the-scenes lobbying of government by corporations dependent on fossil fuel sales.
Despite Portugal’s portrayed image as a top class clean energy producer, this is more hype than reality as the country is way off achieving its 2020 target of 60% of energy production from renewable sources, and will remain behind target unless government strategy is steered back on course.
2020 also is the year that oil and gas extraction is planned to come on-stream in Portugal, if deposits are found and if the current wave of anti-oil protests go unheeded by government, and APREN considers it "urgent and timely to assess the past and rethink the future while transmitting signals of stability to the industry stakeholders to promote investment and development of the most competitive technologies."
