country focus: portugal
Interview with Antonio Sa da Costa, President of APREN
APREN is the Portuguese Association of Independent Producers of Electric Energy from Renewable Sources.
Mr. Sa da Costa, what is the fixed goal for Portugal within the new RES Directive? 
According to the new RES Directive, Portugal must have by 2020, 31% of its final energy consumption derived from RES. In what concerns the renewable electricity this must represent between 60 and 70% of electricity from renewable sources in the total electrical consumption.
Do you believe this represents a difficult challenge for Portugal?
As in any other EU country the new RES Directive will require a national effort and commitment to make sure no time is wasted.
Procedures and supervision of the goal performance must be improved and new frameworks put in place to accommodate new technologies to make sure we can achieve these goals.
We remain optimistic since RES has been, for many years now, a National priority of our governments and our National goal is even higher than those fixated by the EU.
How is the process going for the adoption of a National RES action Plan? Will it be ready for June 2010
Due to the fact our new government took office in November 2009, we are now recovering from the delay to make sure the National RES Action Plan will be ready on time.
APREN is, I am happy to say, actively assisting the Government workgroup to make sure we fulfil our deadlines and the Plan realistically reflects “the when and how” needed for Portugal to reach its goals.
According to your estimations, what will be the share of PV within this Action plan?
Taking into account the RES Directive scenarios, we can start by saying that PV will be increased to 1,300 MW by 2020 from the 150 MW capacity installed today.
But here again Portugal has been more ambitious and the newly-elected Government wants to multiply our existing capacity by 10x to reach 1,500 MW.
In our opinion it is quite likely that, due to the simplicity of PV, its recent and future cost evolution and our natural conditions, these goals will be further extended.
Would you have any recommendations for the Portuguese government?
Our main recommendation regarding the need to formulate a new action plan for Solar PV, a new package that provides the legal framework and FiT to open up the deployment of new PV projects while at the same time restraining irrational speculation that so many times blocks the healthy development and growth of the Solar sector.
A second issue is to make sure that all government institutions, especially those related to the environment, are tuned and understand the importance of RES for the environment, energy dependency/ trade deficit and national economy growth and therefore work closer together to shorten and simplify the licensing procedures and to implement the concept of a one-stop-shop for renewable project licensing procedures.
For more information: www.apren.pt
