Portugal breaks 100% renewables mark but remains isolated

[Rhiannon12866]

Portugal produced more power from clean energy sources in March than it actually needed, marking the first time in the 21st century that renewables have topped 100% of its production. But a dearth of energy connections with the rest of Europe remains problematic.

Increasing renewable energy capacity is one of the key pillars of the Energy Union and in the month of March, Portugal was regularly able to meet 100% of its energy needs predominantly through hydro and wind power.

According to the Iberian nation’s transmission system operator, REN, renewable energy output reached 4,812GWh, surpassing Portugal’s total electricity needs for March, which only topped 4,647GWh.

That meant that the average for the month reached 103.6% from renewables, outstripping the previous contemporary record of 99.2%, set back in February 2014. In the last 40 years, Portugal has not managed to match March’s efforts.

In fact, during the same period last year, renewable energy was only able to meet 62% of Portugal’s electricity needs.

Green MEP Claude Turmes praised Portugal’s “impressive” progress, citing it as evidence that the EU should support a renewable energy target of more than 27% for 2030.


Much more: https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/portugal-breaks-100-renewables-mark-but-remains-isolated/



In March, 55% of Portugal's renewable energy came from its many dams. [Shutterstock]

[PaulX2]

1. It Could Be Done Here If Oil And Coal Companies Didn't Run Our Government

Oh well....

[Rhiannon12866]

2. That's what I was thinking, too...

We need to follow Portugal's lead.

[FBaggins]

4. Yet it isn't really true

A very high percentage of their generation comes from large-scale hydro power (the pictured dam in particular), and their geography allows for comparably large amounts of affordable pumped-hydro storage for their variable generation.

That combination makes high penetration of renewables possible... but doesn't translate to the U.S.

[NNadir]

3. This bullshit marketing is part of the reason that we are now surging over 410 ppm CO2.

For the last half a century we've had this crap where on a particular day the wind blows and the sky, burning with dangerous fossil fuel waste is sunny and everyone starts cheering mindlessly about it.

The destruction of major river systems, strewing toxic materials on roof tops and other places where they will rot as electronic waste in 20 years, and running up the requirements for steel and aluminum to make useless wind turbines had done zero to arrest climate change.

The results of this meaningless hype are in:

Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Week beginning on March 25, 2018: 410.06 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 408.27 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 386.77 ppm

Last updated: April 5, 2018

Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Portugal, which features the sixth highest energy prices in Europe, although not as high as the two leaders, Germany and Denmark, has not stopped, and is not phasing out and will not phase out the use of dangerous fossil fuels.

Eurostat Energy Prices

Of course, in bourgeois cheering for so called "renewable energy" poor people are of no interest whatsoever, because for half a century we've been hearing the big lie that "solar prices are falling." This claim of course, completely ignores that redundant infrastructure, 100% of which depends on dangerous fossil fuels, is always required.

It's a nation with 10.3 million people which depended, despite being on the Iberian Peninsula where massive droughts and possible desertification owing to climate change is of serious concern, on hydroelectricity for 24% of its electricity in 2016, wind for 22% of its electricity, The dependence on coal matched the dependence on wind, and the dependence on solar energy, this in an areas where the existence of clouds is threatened, amounted to 1%, compared to 22% from dangerous natural gas, 100% of which was imported from Algeria.

Portugal: IEA Key Energy Statistics

Of course, no one pays attention to periods of intense heat and doldrums in Portugal. No one gives a shit that they have no possibility, none whatsoever of completely eliminating its dependence on any of the three dangerous fossil fuels for electricity or for anything else.

It is worth noting that 6% of the so called "renewable energy" in Portugal was combustion related, biofuels and "waste," a segment of the so called "renewable energy" industry which is responsible, worldwide, for half of the 7 million air pollution deaths each year.

The main reason that we are now at 410 ppm of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the favorite planetary waste dump, its atmosphere is because of a big lie we tell ourselves using one of the most misleading and intellectually toxic logical pathways, the logic of selective attention.