Climate activists. Are your demands viable?

Climate activists in Portugal have been making themselves seen and heard. With protests, demonstrations and even acts of vandalism, young people aim for the country to achieve the goals of ending the use of fossil fuels by 2030 and transitioning to “100% renewable and affordable electricity by 2025”. These are the main requests. But will they be viable? It depends. The fact is that, even though they are desirable, the deadlines requested are short. At least this is the view of Francisco Ferreira, president of the ZERO Environmental Association.

“These requests – almost demands – made are not really realistic”, he tells i, highlighting the two best known and most talked about: no use of fossil fuels in 2030 and having total renewable electricity in 2025.

Regarding the latter, the president of ZERO says that “in relation to having completely renewable electricity in 2025, we have periods when we are close. But for the whole year, having only renewable electricity, for now it is still very difficult because everything depends a lot on weather and climate conditions”.

Francisco Ferreira highlights that, at the moment, we even have very high renewable percentages, which is justified by the fact that we have had a lot of rain, there is still a lot of wind and now we are starting to have sun. “We have a good mix of renewables but, for example, if hydro fails, which has already failed with the drought we had in 2022 and 2023, then we won’t be able to reach 100% of renewables”, he adds, adding that we will only be able to reach 100% of electricity from renewable points, “I would say, around 2030 or even after that. In 2030, he would say that we will be able to be very close, it will be possible to be very close, more than we are now in annual terms”. But, he warns, “there will still be periods or times when we will not be supplied solely by renewable electricity”. And one of the reasons for this situation is simple: “We need more storage”. “Storage between days, between months and, therefore, for that, we need green hydrogen, more energy efficiency”, he argues.

Francisco Ferreira highlights the fact that Portugal is getting closer to this goal of 100% electricity from renewable sources, “but the difficult thing is not to reach 90 or 95%. The difficult part will then be the final percentage points because it has a lot to do with the management of the system which, in the case of Portugal, is even more complicated because we are not in the middle of Europe, this involves managing a lot of connections with other countries and, In practice, in our case, it means that we are almost like an island because we only have a border with Spain”.

End of fossil fuels In the case of demanding the end of fossil fuels by 2030, the situation is not so rosy. “It’s completely impossible”, he laments.

The president of the environmental association argues that this should be the trend to follow but “unfortunately, this is not what is happening”, warning that in certain sectors such as road or air, “we are seeing greater use or greater demand for air travel. plane or we are using the car more. We are actually quite in the opposite direction.”

And he recalls that “the burning of fossil fuels is the main reason for greenhouse gas emissions and consequent climate change, but society is so dependent on fossil fuels that we will need more time”. For Francisco Ferreira, six years “are by no means enough to do this, even for economic and social reasons. How do I guarantee that from one moment to the next there will be no more combustion vehicles? We need more time but it is clear that this must be a crucial objective not only for Portugal but on a global scale, and we are not having great success”.

Legitimate concerns Artur Patuleia, senior partner at the European research center E3G, tells i that, in general, “climate activism has managed to bring legitimate concerns about the impacts of climate change into public discussion”, adding that “the destruction caused by fires and the economic impacts on agriculture or access to water from Algarve tourism, are just a harbinger of the effects of climate change in Portugal”. The official also says that “science is quite explicit about the short period of time that exists to take measures to avoid more harmful consequences”.

For Artur Patuleia, the issue of viability is important, “but the discussion of climate goals must be placed firstly at the level of impact analysis and must reflect the type of society and economy that is intended to be built in line with scientific recommendations most current”, which was one of the bases of the European Ecological Pact. “Portugal has a serious competitiveness factor in renewable energy for attracting investment, creating qualified jobs and strengthening its geopolitical influence”. And, therefore, he asks: “Wouldn’t it make sense to accelerate investment in renewables, decarbonizing the electricity sector? Car congestion in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto is a factor that affects productivity and has serious impacts on public health. Wouldn’t it make sense to invest in the accelerated transition to a model of mobility and territorial planning that reduces dependence on the car?”

Lack of political will? Asked whether the fact that these targets cannot be met within the deadlines requested by climate activists is related to a lack of political will, Francisco Ferreira says yes, but not only that. The person in charge argues that it is essential to have plans, remembering that there are plans that are up for public discussion, as is the case with the National Energy and Climate Plan for 2030, “which is currently being reviewed” or the Roadmap for Carbon Neutrality in 2050.

Therefore, “now everything depends on the measures they have in place and it will depend a lot on political will”.

In his opinion, many of the measures, to be implemented, “depend on having an administration with the responsiveness to implement many of the measures”, giving the example of renewables. “One of the problems is that, in order to license many projects in the area of ​​renewables, the problem is not even environmental restrictions, it is the inability to respond from State departments, general directorates of the State that are unable to keep up with the necessary pace. Or else we don’t have an electrical grid prepared to have more renewables”, also highlighting the issue of infrastructure and administrative issues “that impede this acceleration”.

Therefore, it is clear that these developments depend on political will “but it also depends a lot on people’s acceptability”. And people’s acceptability “has to do with the measures that are taken or not. In other words, if we practically prohibit the use of cars in city centers, or if we put tolls at the entrance to cities, we will have strong objections from people and local authorities”. Even so, Francisco Ferreira argues that it is with measures of this nature and also measures of a fiscal nature that “perhaps they should be implemented to be able to reverse the increase that we are experiencing, particularly in the case of road transport”.

And he gives one more example: “Removing Lisbon airport to another location, if we have huge airport expansion projects, this will obviously translate into more emissions. There is a great responsibility here, without a doubt, from politicians but also from companies and people”.

For Artur Patuleia, it is certain that “the inherent role of any Government is to listen to the different interests in society, design political options and make decisions”. In this sense, “it will be important to maintain dialogue with civil society, considering their contributions and promoting their participation in the public debate”.

For him, in our country, governments “have successively increased ambition at national level and supported greater ambition at international level”. An evolution that, in his opinion, “ends up bringing political ambition closer to scientific recommendations and the positions of civil society”.

The senior partner at E3G also adds that the existing differences “end up resulting from a set of uncertainties in governance in terms of the capacity to implement and monitor public policies and the lack of greater coordination and planning between different sectors of public administration”.

And he gives an example: “The existence of a green industrial strategy, as foreseen in the Climate Base Law, would allow us to have better knowledge about the type of measures, investment and financing needs necessary for the decarbonization of industry, creating the conditions for greater ambition.” In a positive sense, he argues, “the reduction in costs of technologies essential to reducing emissions, such as renewables or electric vehicles, has contributed to greater confidence among Governments in taking on more ambitious goals, bringing them closer to the positions of civil society”.

Artur Patuleia concludes that it will be important to “operationalize the Council for Climate Action, provided for in the Climate Base Law, which will allow political decisions to be made based on technical and independent knowledge”.