Portugal

An investment of around €5 million will allow an old solar panel factory in the Beja district to reopen and create more than 40 new jobs. Galp Energia’s former director of innovation is part of the new team.

A total of 6 Covid-19 positives have just been detected among workers at the Solara4 plant, located in the Portuguese Algarve. According to information obtained by pv magazine, work at the facility has been partially stopped.

A newly proposed solar project in Portugal could almost double the nation’s installed PV capacity. The installation will likely require an investment of around €1 billion.

The Portuguese utility also wants to close all its coal power plants by 2025.

The French energy business said PV made up 21% of the 3 GW of new renewables generation capacity it installed last year, with the majority of its total new clean power facilities arriving in North America.

European renewables, including Spanish solar, made big gains as energy demand recovered before the second wave of Covid infections. Nuclear was a notable loser, in part because clean energy volumes in the north of the continent drove down power prices sufficiently to make reactors uncompetitive.

Portuguese utility EDP has agreed to buy a minority stake of up to 40% in Brazil’s Blue Sol Participações.

Each of the nations, like Greece, will have gigawatt-plus solar additions in 2024, according to Solarpower Europe, enough to carve out a 3% slice of an anticipated 35 GW regional market.

Pioneering solar projects which signed ten-year feed-in tariff agreements will soon need to operate free of subsidy and with local authorities like the City of London starting to embrace direct contracts with renewables generators, the PPA market could be set for another turbo charge.