2022-2023 Portugal’s Energy Saving Plan – a missed opportunity?
It will suffice to achieve the immediate goal, but fewer platitudes and more ambition would allow us to move faster in the necessary decarbonization of the economy
It is well known that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlighted Europe’s energy dependence on Russian fossil fuels, specifically natural gas, which led to escalating energy prices that exacerbated inflation, increased production costs, and significantly cooled economic activity, putting us on the brink of a recession. Even more recently, the energy security of the population seemed to be at stake.
To address this set of challenges, the EU created the REPowerEU plan to accelerate the energy transition and complemented it with an agreement for a voluntary 15% reduction in natural gas demand until March 2023, after which Portugal created its Energy Saving Plan 2022-2023 (ESP), an instrument that lists a set of recommendations and obligations (in the case of the central government) with which the Portuguese government estimates to achieve 31% of the voluntary European target. The remainder will be achieved through ongoing measures under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (18%) and new solar photovoltaic capacity to be installed in the country (63%). Adding all components together, a reduction of around 17% is expected by the end of 2023, compared to 15% of the voluntary target and 7% to which Portugal is obliged, due to the derogation for countries with limited interconnections to other Member States.
What’s in the Plan in regard to lighting?
The 2022-2023 ESP includes 16 measures with different implementation deadlines, aimed at public administration, central and local, and the private sector. Of these, 12 relate to behaviors and recommendations, three to training and capacity building, and one to communication and awareness. In addition to focusing on energy saving, water efficiency (and rightly so, as we have already recommended, because saving water is also saving energy), in a holistic vision of the energy sector, and mobility are also covered. The duration of the measures may be temporary or permanent and may or may not involve investment.
Let’s limit our analysis to the measures aimed at the public sector in the fields of LED lighting, focusing on street lighting, and water efficiency.
In the field of lighting, two measures are presented:
- Reduce energy consumption associated with indoor and outdoor lighting;
- Reduce energy consumption associated with street lighting.
The first includes temporary actions for decorative lighting and common-sense measures such as encouraging the use of natural light, turning off interior lighting whenever the space is not in use and after working hours, and adjusting the intensity of lighting to the needs and pace of use.
Among the actions requiring investment, in 2023 it is difficult to accept the recommendation to “replace indoor/outdoor lighting with high-performance LED technology” (LED use is not yet widespread?!), although the reference to “consumption rationalization systems” and the “installation of dimmers” is to be applauded.
The second measure is aimed at the local public administration and the recommended actions include adjusting lighting schedules and levels and avoiding keeping them on during daylight hours. With investment, it is recommended:
- Replacement of indoor street lighting with energy-efficient LED technology luminaires;
- Implementation of more efficient lighting systems throughout the street lighting network by installing regulation and control systems, including presence sensors.
Next-generation LED lighting integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT) is a paradigm shift in lighting. It saves up to 80% energy consumption, but also transforms the way we organize and live in cities, paving the way towards smart cities and more sustainable territories.
Municipalities such as Valongo, Moita, Cascais and others have already realized this. Tomar is already following the path of a Smart Human City, using street lighting as the basis of a smart city with unlimited growth potential. Given its advantages, the adoption of these measures can and should be accelerated, especially when considering that the investment that the plan refers to as necessary is actually a zero-cost investment when carried out under an ESCO project in which an Energy Services Company assumes it in its entirety, being paid exclusively through the savings obtained by the municipality over the duration of the contract.
Given that the adoption of the measures proposed by the 2022-2023 ESP is voluntary, and we do not advocate otherwise, it would be wise to include incentive mechanisms that could trigger a new impetus to the adoption of these measures, which unfortunately is not the case.
Water use efficiency measures
Again, regarding water efficiency the 2022-2023 ESP says the right things, but not as many as it should, in our opinion.
Water wastage in the public network amounts to an exorbitant 174 million m3, about 252 Olympic swimming pools per day. When we talk about water efficiency and water resource management, it seems inevitable to optimize the public water supply network. However, the plan does not devote a single word to this. It is not that the proposals put forward are not valid, all of them, but once again they tend to be platitudes and common-sense measures with no transformative potential. Not even mentioning the need to monitor and control more effectively the loss of water from the public network seems to us to be a major failure, as if the public administration refuses to face the problem and find solutions to fix it.
ESP: a missed opportunity?
In short, what’s new in Portugal’s Energy Savings Plan 2022-2023? Very little, unfortunately. It will suffice for the immediate objective it seeks to achieve, and in that sense it may not be the right document for bigger changes, but it certainly left us with appetite for more.
Most of the recommended measures are long overdue. And in the somewhat more ambitious ones, apart from the benefits derived from their implementation, if and once understood by the various actors, there are no incentives able to trigger change.
It is undoubtedly important that each entity or citizen can be a responsible agent of that change, but the role of public policy agents is also to create the conditions and incentives for it to take place, especially when it is important for it to become permanent. In addition to assuming the inherent ones, obviously.
For the reasons already stated, it seems to us that the Plan could have gone further.
Miguel Allen Lima
ARQUILED CEO
