Portugal just ran on 100% renewable energy for six days in a row
Topics: Environment, Climate Change, World News, News
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
Topics: Environment, Climate Change, World News, News
With the talk surrounding the topic of climate change increasing every day, more countries around the world are doing their bit to prevent a climate crisis in the future.
To combat global warming, so many countries across the globe now use renewable energy to do their bit for the environment.
Recently, Portugal actually broke a record for energy production across the globe as it went six full days relying solely on renewable energy.
So, from electrical appliances in the home to factories used in industry, all were running on either wind, hydro, or solar power for six days straight.
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Between 4:00AM on 31 October and 9:00AM on 6 November, the nation of ten million relied on only renewable energy, as 1102 GWh was generated.
This surpassed the national consumption for the same period by 262 GWh, with the previous record set in 2019 still being an impressive 131 hours.
While many countries still rely on fossil fuels as a form of energy, Portugal was able to produce more than enough renewable energy to function for six consecutive days.
Hugo Costa, the individual who runs EDP Renewables, the country's renewable arm of the state utility, said: "The gas plants were there, waiting to dispatch energy, should it be needed. It was not, because the wind was blowing; it was raining a lot.
"And we were producing with a positive impact to the consumers because the prices have dropped dramatically, almost to zero."
The recent successful test in Portugal comes as nations aim to hit the Paris Agreement climate goals by 2050.
By then, nations need to run their grids free of carbon emissions not just for six days, but for the entire year round.
A handful of counties do this already, thanks to endowments of hydro power.
But the vast majority of nations in the world still run off carbon emissions, which many climate activists feel will cause a real climate emergency in the future.
Portugal has taken a big step forward with its recent trial, after committing to building renewable energies early and often.
Expert Miguel Prado, who covers Portugal's energy sector for the newspaper Expresso, said: "The key conclusion, in my opinion, is that it shows that the Portuguese grid is prepared for very high shares of renewable electricity and for its expected variation: We were able to manage both the sharp increase of hydro and wind production, and also the return to a lower share of renewables, when natural-gas power plants were requested again to supply some of the country’s demand."