[ad_1]
Portugal has not used coal to produce electricity for 52 days, which has reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by almost a million tons, according to the accounts of the environmental association Zero, published on Tuesday.
In a statement announcing the registry, the association emphasizes that coal has not been burned to produce electricity for 52 consecutive days at the Sines and Pego power plants, and recalls that the Sines plant has been off for 100 days.
“This has led to an unprecedented and unprecedented reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Portugal,” Zero says in the statement.
For the results Zero now reveals, he used data from the National Energy Networks (REN) for the months of March and April 2020, comparing them with the same period in 2019. Therefore, the association calculates a decrease in emissions of 960 thousand tons (370 thousand tons for the total of March and 590 thousand tons for the total of April).
In the same two months, there was also a 14.5% increase in renewable sources in electricity production, compared to the same period in 2019, from 62.6% to 77.1%, according to Zero, who still consider “relevant”. “The drop in electricity consumption, which reached 12% compared to April 2020 with April 2019.
Putting all the data together, the environmental association estimates that the average daily CO2 emissions associated with electricity production fell from 28,000 tons / day in March and April last year to 12,000 tons / day in March and April this year. . .
In the statement to Zero, he points out that the covid-19 pandemic “has no direct relationship with these results”, except for example in the reduction of electricity consumption, and says that they are mainly due to a consequence of market prices coal, the costs associated with emissions and competitiveness, and the availability of other alternatives, especially electricity from renewable sources and natural gas plants, which are more efficient than coal plants.
The association recalls the announced end of the Pego (2021) and Sines (2023) coal plants (which “are in practice”), two responsible for a significant amount of Portugal’s CO2 emissions, which also emit other pollutants such nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particles and heavy metals.
“The current shutdowns at the Pego and Sines power plants show that it is possible to eliminate them from the system without jeopardizing the security of the electricity supply in the country,” emphasizes Zero, adding that the investments for the production of electricity from Las Fuentes renewable energy sources will be able to guarantee a progressively significant fraction of electricity generation, “with lower costs for the consumer and without direct emissions of greenhouse gases.”
And then, he also says, the existing thermal plants combined cycle with natural gas (Ribatejo, Pego, Lares and Tapada do Outeiro) have allowed to replace the electricity supply of coal plants with much lower CO2 emissions.
[ad_2]
