The World Energy Congress 2022 will be a high level event, enabling an effective dialogue between a global Energy Community, gathering Ministers, relevant energy stakeholders, industry and academia.

We are convinced that Portugal is the best country to host the World Energy Congress 2022. Portugal should be an example for other countries in terms of Energy Transition, since we are European leaders on deployment of renewable energies. Portugal has been committed to the Energy Transition, from the beginning of the 21st century, being today one of the world frontrunners on this field.

Portugal has been applying an ambitious and successful plan to promote electricity production from renewables. Portugal has a huge potential on the renewables, namely, hydropower, wind, solar, biomass and wave energy.

Therefore, Portugal has committed to an ambitious target for 2020, reaching a renewables share in gross final energy consumption of 31%. By the end of 2017, Portugal had already an installed capacity of 14.4 GW from renewable technologies, accounting for 64 % of total capacity.

In March 2018, Portugal`s monthly renewable energy production exceeded the power demand on the mainland electricity consumption, generating more renewable energy than it needed.

The Portuguese energy policy has contributed to the development of a highly skilled workforce and of an energy industry cluster ready to deliver advanced renewable energy technology. Adding to the broad socio-economic outcomes, the public policies on energy contributed to the development of renewable energy markets.

Due to the notable cost evolution of the renewables technological progress and the superb natural geographic conditions of the country, Portugal took a further step in the energy transition to a market based on renewable energy investment. In Portugal, we have already been able to license 968 MW of solar PV capacity fully market-based projects.

Although, the Interconnections are a key issue for achieving a sustainable energy system and the ambition of Portugal in terms of renewables is closely related with the electricity interconnections capacity.

In recent times, Portugal has strongly supported the 32% EU – wide binding target for renewables by 2030 as well as, binding electricity interconnection capacity targets of 10% by 2020 and 15% by 2030 for the Members States. These targets were just agreed by the European Council and by Parliament.

Finally, we believe that Portugal is the right country to host the World Energy Congress 2022 and we invite you to share and be part of our energy transition.

Jorge Seguro Sanches
Secretary of State for Energy
Government of Portugal