Five years ago, Portugal’s government promised that by 2010, 45% of the country’s energy will come from renewable sources (then, only 17 percent of Portugal’s grid came from renewables). Sounds impossible, but it’s true.
The green energy is mostly extracted from hydro and wind resources. The Portuguese government privatized and restructured former state energy utilities to create a grid better suited to renewable power sources.
Now, Portugal and Scotland have signed an agreement to start the development of wave energy. It set a feed-in tariff of 260 euros per megawatt/hour for the first 20 MW installed.
Portugal is now exporting wind farms to less developed nations in this sector, such as the USA. Portugal’s largest energy company, “Energias de Portugal”, owns wind farms in Texas and Iowa, through its American subsidiary, Horizon Wind Energy.
Government officials claim that by the end of 2020, Portugal will retrieve 60% of its power needs from renewables and it’s not impossible to add 15% more power in 10 years if we look at the achieved performance of adding 28% in only 5 years.
[Source:Cleantechnica]
