The Portuguese government has raised the 2030 solar target to 11.4 GW. Now it plans to cover 85 percent of its electricity with renewable energy sources by the end of the decade.
Portugal has announced that it will revise its 2030 National Energy and Climate Plan (PNEC) under the slogan “a greener country, faster”. Now it hopes to achieve climate neutrality by 2045.
The goal of the updated energy strategy is for 80% of the country’s electricity to be renewable by 2026 and 85% by 2030. The revised plan sets a target of 20.4 GW of operational solar PV systems in 2030 and 14.9 GW of utility-scale plants and facilities. 5.5 GW for distributed generation.
The government said deployment of solar power plants should not exceed 0.4 percent of the country’s area, and has called for compensation and community participation. The new plan also includes improvements to permitting processes, designated areas, a regulatory framework for decentralized generation and energy communities, and new financial incentives.
Portugal’s cumulative PV capacity reached 2.59 GW at the end of 2022, surpassing the growth of other renewable energy sources. Recent statistics from Portugal’s General Directorate of Energy and Geology (DGEG) also show that the country added just 118 MW of new solar capacity in the first four months of 2023.
BloombergNEF predicts that Portugal’s solar capacity will reach 1,363 MW by the end of 2023, a significant increase compared to last year’s 890 MW.
