COP31: NGOs challenge government to accelerate energy transition

Oportuguese environmental organizations heard by Lusa challenged the government to anticipate the carbon neutrality of the energy system by 2040, to accelerate the decarbonisation of transport and to involve local communities in the expansion of renewable energy.

“ We demand a binding timetable to cut fossil gas consumption by 77% and oil consumption by 68% by 2035 ", said to Lusa the director of Greenpeace Portugal, Toni Melajoki Roseiro, who advocates the revision of the National Energy and Climate Plan to anticipate the neutrality of the energy system to 2040.

Greenpeace Portugal wants the Government to announce at the 31st United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP31) in Antália, Turkey, Portugal's formal accession to the Santa Marta process, an international initiative to accelerate the abandonment of fossil fuels, and publish a national roadmap with deadlines to stop using oil, gas and coal.

“ Freeing ourselves from fossil dependence will save the country around €7 billion annually in imports, a value that self-finances our fair transition”, estimated Toni Melajoki Roseiro.

The United Nations climate summit will take place between 9 and 20 November, with the mission of accelerating emissions reduction and financing the adaptation of developing countries, which receive one tenth of what they need.

The Portuguese delegation to COP31 is headed by the Minister for Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho.

WWF Portugal’s Policy and Climate Coordinator Bianca Mattos recalled that Portugal supported Santa Marta’s initiative and argued that the government should use the country’s renewable energy experience to influence its peers.

“ It is important to build resilience and energy security that does not depend on fossil fuels,” Bianca Mattos told Lusa.

In Portugal, the person responsible pointed out as a priority “the decarbonization of transport systems, which in Portugal is the one that weighs most on its footprint”, stating that it is still necessary “to make cities more resilient and that this resilience is also mainly based on natural-based solutions”.

The President of Quercus, Alexandra Azevedo, criticised the sectoral plan for the areas of acceleration of renewable energy, which the association contested because it considered that the Government could “use this mechanism to overcome environmental legislation”, in particular with regard to environmental impact assessment.

Alexandra Azevedo acknowledged that electricity production from renewable sources is Portugal’s “visiting card”, but argued that the energy transition should advance “without further destruction of the territory”.

And this goes through more decentralized production, with the involvement of communities and local authorities, he considered.

The President of Quercus also asked the government to pay more attention to agriculture and forest in climate policy, leaving a criticism of the expansion of intensive irrigation in areas where water is already scarce and pointed out the case of a citrus production project in Grândola, whose environmental impact assessment, he said, was contested in court by Quercus and by five other associations.

“ Policies cannot be missed by communities,” he said.

COP31 takes place at a time when two wars divert attention from climate control.

With the war in Ukraine since 2022 and Iran with Israel and the United States since the beginning of this year, the spotlight is focused on increasing the cost of living and fossil fuels, passing almost unnoticed a recent UN report warning that the world has already exceeded the global warming limit of 1.5oC above the average values of the pre-industrial period, a value set in 2015 in the Paris Agreement, considered historic, such as the border to prevent catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

It is in this “climate” that the UN conference, co-chaired by Turkey and Australia, is taking place, focusing on the evolution of the energy transition and the financing of decarbonisation, to try to revive objectives set out in the Paris Agreement.