If they can do it, why not others?

Renewable energy is plentiful. It is clean. It is blah, blah... we have heard the mantras many times. It's good but well, too costly for us!

What would you say to hear that Portugal draws upto 45 percent of its power from renewable energy?! That was the target set four years ago when renewables comprised 17 percent. They have as good as achieved the target set for 2010. By 2014 the renewable energy program will allow Portugal to fully close at least two conventional power plants and reduce the operation of others.

The new power plants, mostly wind and hydro, will add a small percentage to ratepayers bills but within a decade that initial investment expense should be gone, and ongoing rates will be much lower, due to the fuel-free nature of renewable energy. As a result the nation’s electricity rates should drop within ten to fifteen years and then remain low.

In 1990, the base year for the Kyoto accord that Europe signed, Portugal had a simple agrarian economy. Today wind, hydro, tidal and solar are surging ahead. A thriving wind industry, created from scratch in the formerly agrarian society, is not only supplying the nation, along with hydro power, but now exporting wind farms to less developed nations such as the USA!

It was not easy. To force Portugal’s energy transition, the government restructured and privatized former state energy utilities to create a grid better suited to renewable power sources. To lure private companies into Portugal’s new market, the government gave them contracts locking in a stable price for 15 years — a subsidy that varied by technology and was initially high but decreased with each new contract round.

In short - good policy and visionary leadership has paid off!