The Government wants to see municipalities across the country follow the "excellent example" of Loulé in the energy transition, said the Secretary of State for Energy, João Galamba, on the sidelines of a visit to this Algarve county yesterday, to see on the spot the many projects that the Loulé municipality has in this area.
Loulé has been investing heavily in renewable energies, its own production and energy efficiency, as part of a strategy for energy transition made known yesterday by Vítor Aleixo, mayor of Loulé.
The mayor from Loulé reminded the journalists, on the sidelines of the tour he carried out in the council, accompanied by the member of the Government, that this strategy stems from the Municipal Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change and that it is a major commitment of the municipality to achieve the goal of “zero carbon ”, that is, fully offset all the greenhouse gases it produces.
The most visible part of this strategy, «which probably has no parallel in Portugal», are the physical works, some already completed, others in progress and some more in the pipeline.
Yesterday, João Galamba got to know the contribution that the Loulé Market, the Loulé municipal companies, namely Inframoura, and a group of schools in the county are already making to the production of clean energy.
On the way, he attended the presentation of an innovative platform for the management of the electricity network and monitoring of consumption at the points of access to the network in the Municipality of Loulé, commissioned by the municipality to the company Algardata, based in the municipality.
And, even though the visit was halfway through, João Galamba already filled the Loulé Chamber with praise.
«I congratulate the City Council of Loulé. (…) We want to create the conditions so that what we are seeing today in Loulé can be deepened and so that the whole country can follow the example of Loulé and invest heavily in the energy transition», said the member of the Government.
The Secretary of State for Energy spoke with journalists at the door of the EBI Sebastião Teixeira school, in Salir, which was pioneer at national level in the creation of a school energy community, through the installation of a photovoltaic plant with a connection power of 40 kW.
For João Galamba, the project by the Padre João Coelho Cabanita School Group, from Loulé, to which the school in Salir belongs, “is very interesting, since the energy transition actually requires the involvement and participation of people. There is a pedagogical dimension here, in the formation of civic bonds and in the strengthening of the community».
“It would be difficult to think of a more pedagogical tool than this one”, he illustrated.
This is because the project involves parents, the school community and students, and makes them «realize that the school, today, produces electricity to satisfy a significant part of their needs and that it can inject into the network and receive revenue for it, creating a fund that is the community itself that discusses where it wants to apply».
"It shows well the potential that we always thought existed in the energy transition", added the member of the Government.
For this and other investments it has made, Loulé “is an excellent example of a municipality strongly mobilized to play its role in the energy transition, taking advantage of the many endogenous resources existing in this territory and, not least, involving people”.
João Galamba guaranteed that “what the Government wants is to give conditions to the territories so that they can take the initiative. What we have been seeing here today, in Loulé, is an excellent example of all this: it involves schools, IPSS and municipal buildings».
In this way, it has given financial incentives to projects in the area of energy transition and promoted changes to the law, to make the bet on clean energy more attractive.
“Last year, in October, we changed the legislation to facilitate individual, collective or community self-consumption projects, facilitating licensing. Up to a certain power, just prior communication is enough. We have greatly simplified registration and licensing», revealed the member of Government.
“We have now opened a notice to support energy efficiency projects, which also includes photovoltaic solar production and solar thermal for sanitary water. We will give high priority to building renovation, energy efficiency and energy communities in the next Community Support Framework, with funds directed, for example, to schools, but also to companies, individuals, Parish Councils and municipalities», he added. .
And, although there is no specific incentive for the Algarve, João Galamba has no doubts that «this opportunity will be widely used, here in the Algarve», not least because investments, namely in photovoltaic, «pay for themselves very quickly, much faster than in other regions of the country'.
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