54% of Portugal’s electricity is now generated by renewable energy
I'd like to offer a more critical perspective as a Portuguese living in Portugal.<p>We're a country with very severe economical, financial, social and health problems which have been unsolved for years. Living in Portugal is a hard and it's expected it will get harder and harder. We have tons of young people leaving the country every year.<p>Our CO2 emissions are like 0.15% of the total and our per-capita emissions are already lower than for ex. Germany. We basically have no industry. If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn't move the needle on global warming at all.<p>Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not making any sense -- because it's a popular measure across all age groups.<p>Energy companies had to invest in still unproven renewable tech which was very costly. As a result, energy companies then had to amortize this investment and now we have one the highest energy prices in all of Europe. Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.<p>So, we -- the Portuguese -- are worse, overall, because of these short sighted measures. But, hey, at least we get good press.