Clean, green and the unseen

• Autor(a) principal: Mahoney, Katherine
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Gouveia, João Pedro, Lopes, Rita, Sareen, Siddharth
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/149402
• topic: Climate mitigation; Competing agendas; Energy poverty; Inequity; Just transitions; Health(social science); Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment; Development; SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy; SDG 13 - Climate Action

Portugal has engaged strongly with the CC agenda in the release of the 2050 Roadmap for Carbon Neutrality [2] and 2030 National Energy and Climate Plan [1]. In fact, Portugal was one of the first countries in the world to set a carbon neutrality goal for 2050 [61]. Despite significant economic setbacks resulting from the global Covid-19 pandemic, the country has retained focus on its climate goals and combined efforts for economic recovery with energy transition strategies. Examples include the fast-tracking of permissions for utility-scale solar photovoltaic grid connections and the introduction of financial support for building efficiency measures (IEA, 2021).It should be noted that although not identified as a stakeholder group, Chinese investors have invested significantly in the Portuguese ET. During 2000–2014, China's cumulative investment in Portugal totalled €5.138 billion; the motivation for this investment is thought to be principally economic [95]. The strategy of owning more than 10% of organisational voting rights and thus securing significant management influence within the company is common practice among Chinese investors in Southern European ETs [95]. This investment has clear benefits from an economic perspective, providing much-needed funds to progress the ET in the region. However, international investment of this kind tends to favour a centralized approach to the ET, which, as previously highlighted, is not beneficial for all stakeholders.João Pedro Gouveia, Rita Lopes and Katherine Mahoney acknowledge and are thankful for the support provided to CENSE by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the strategic project UIDB/04085/2020. Katherine's work has also been supported by FCT through the scholarship SFRH/BD/147925/2019. Sareen is grateful for support from the Research Council of Norway project ‘Accountable Solar Energy TransitionS’ (ASSET, grant 314022). The authors acknowledge the COST Action 'European Energy Poverty: Agenda Co-Creation and Knowledge Innovation' (ENGAGER 2017–2021, CA16232) funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (www.cost.eu) for framing the context of this work. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors