this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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I looked into this more, the 2022 data tells a much different story than the article:
https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/portugal#how-much-electricity-does-the-country-consume-each-year
hard to believe they've basically just returned to 1985 levels of renewables for electricity generation.
In 1980 gdp per capita of Portugal was lower then that of Ghana! They had massive economic growth since then and the country industrialized very late especially by European standards. That is why you see the electricity production more then double over that period. Hydro was basicly the big electricity source at the time, but there is limited potential. So thats why its share was going down.
No chart I looked at on that site says that
Look for "Portugal: How much of the country’s electricity comes from renewables?" in the bottom quarter.
So what's your point?
It's important to have an accurate understanding of objective reality. That's reason enough.
Thats correct. But I also do not understand what these graphs should show me and how this conflicts with the article?
I find stories like this can misrepresent the actual distance from the goal for many countries, or the progress made -- if any. In the case of Portugal, it's just barely returned to the level of renewable electricity production it achieved almost 40 years ago, but the renewable electricity generation at that time 40 years ago was the sort you could use for 24/7 baseload, whereas today we're using much more intermittent forms of renewable electricity generation so getting a good day or 6 isn't as meaningful as it might at first appear.
Contrast another story from earlier this year where Norway was paying people to burn electricity because of favorable conditions -- disregarding that unusual story, Norway's electricity generation is 99% renewable and in fact exports renewable energy to its neighbors, and electricity is so inexpensive that 70% of home heating in that cold nation is electric. That's a real success story.
But this is due to the industrialization and the resulting higher energy consumption.
TIL about the Carnation Revolution in 1974, and the dictatorship from 1930 to 1974 that focused on keeping Portugal a largely agrarian economy.
Absolutely mind blowing.
That looks like they use something like 75% fossil fuels? I guess the posted article is only taking about the grid, which is a small portion of overall energy usage?
The main drivers of energy use are typically going to be transportation, home heating, electrical generation, and industry.
One of the sliding scales that you have to be very careful of when implementing green energy policies is if your electrical costs go up, then you can end up taking people who were previously using renewable energy to eat their homes and push them into using fossil fuels.
One guy I knew was heating his home using 100% renewable energy from hydroelectric, but then the electric company started building a bunch of solar panels and wind farms that weren't generating electricity during the times that it was needed, so costs went up substantially. When he moved from electric to propane, the cost difference was so much that he paid for the entire system and all the fuel for the year in one month of not paying for electric heat.
One really interesting thing about the page that I linked, is that in 1987 the same percentage of electricity generation was renewable as today, Which was followed by a massive drop and a swing to rely on fossil fuels.
Is it hard to believe or have you not thought about it hard enough?