The Minister of the Environment defended this Tuesday that Portugal is interested in seeking alternatives to neutral fuels, as long as this ensures the objective of ending fossil fuels, and insisted that Portugal must “safeguard industrial capacity.”
“For us, the idea of fossil exclusivity is that it has to be limited. When carbon neutral solutions are presented, we should not choose technologieswe must promote all possible technologies that appear and are competitive […]We must not close ourselves off from that possibility,” said Duarte Cordeiro, in statements to journalists at the end of a meeting of ministers of the European Union (EU) with the energy portfolio, in Brussels (Belgium).
Berlin, for example, was in favor of this “compatibility with synthetic fuels that are neutral,” added the Minister for the Environment and Climate Action, and for Portugal, “all solutions are viable” as long as ” achieve the goal that is set”.
Now it is necessary to find these alternatives: “There is work that the sector must do to find solutions. Portugal also because it produces cars […]It is not indifferent to us that there is the capacity to make a transition in order to safeguard the existing industrial capacity in our country”.
In the opinion of Duarte Cordeiro, what has been approved by the 27 EU Member States is intended to “make environmental objectives compatible with the industrial capacity” of each country.
The document approved this Tuesday by the ministers, which is part of the ‘Fit for 55’ package, addresses the issue of ecological fuels, anticipating that the European Commission will present a “proposal for the registration of vehicles that operate exclusively with neutral fuels in terms of CO2, after 2035, in line with EU legislation, outside the scope of fleet standards, and in line with the EU climate neutrality objective.
The Target 55 package is a set of proposals aimed at reviewing and updating EU legislation and creating initiatives with the aim of ensuring that EU policies are in line with the climate targets agreed by the Council and the European Parliament.
Duarte Cordeiro recalled that the European Commission also approved the extension, until the end of the year, of the Iberian mechanism that allows defining a maximum ceiling for the price of gas used for electricity production.
And as I said this morning, this mechanism, which ended on May 31, will mean that the price of gas, instead of increasing five euros a month, will only increase one euro a month until the end of 2023.
“Right now, we can look the gas market and realize that prices, on average, are below what is the Iberian mechanism. Therefore, in practice, the mechanism has not required intervention. […] and that is positive news. However, we do not know if this reality will continue throughout the year”, added the socialist minister, pointing to the peak of gas supply by the EU Member States, between September and November, as a “trial” period.
Regarding the proposal of the European Commission for the joint purchase of gas by the Member States, Duarte Cordeiro acknowledged that “it is very late.”
Source: Observadora
