Portugal: Locals agree with lawsuit to block Alentejo solar power plant plan

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Portugal: Locals agree with lawsuit to block Alentejo solar power plant plan

4:59 CAT | 27 Mar 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

The Portuguese Protect Alentejo Association has said that the actions of the public prosecutor’s office to challenge the construction of a photovoltaic solar power plant in the district of Santiago do Cacém (Setúbal) “reinforces” its arguments against the project.

Liliana Silva, spokesperson for ProtegeAlentejo, told Lusa on Monday that she was “very pleased” with the “intervention of the public prosecutor’s office” because it “reinforces the association’s arguments in the fight it has been waging since the project was first approved”.

According to the Público newspaper in this Sunday’s online edition, the public prosecutor’s office has filed a lawsuit in the Administrative and Fiscal Court (TAF) of Beja against the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) to challenge the project for a photovoltaic solar power plant in the district of Santiago do Cacém.

The lawsuit was filed by the public prosecutor’s central department for state litigation and collective and diffuse interests at the end of January, according to a note published on the website of the public prosecutor’s office (PGR), consulted on Monday by Lusa.
The measure aims to challenge the “environmental licensing of the project to build a photovoltaic solar power plant in the district of Santiago do Cacém with a planned area of around 1,000 hectares (10,000,000 m2), currently occupied by mostly forestry uses,” it says.

“The reason for bringing the lawsuit is the assessment of the licence’s non-compliance with a wide range of territorial management instruments and legal regimes for the protection of natural resources,” reads the same note.

The lawsuit “is brought against” the APA, as the “environmental impact assessment authority”, and has “the company promoting the project” of the solar power plant as a counter-interested party.

Iberdrola’s project, in partnership with Prosolia Energy, envisages the construction of a mega photovoltaic plant in the São Domingos and Vale de Água parish union, with 1,200 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity.

According to Iberdrola, the photovoltaic solar power plant, called Fernando Pessoa, will provide “clean, cheap and locally produced energy sufficient to meet the annual needs of around 430,000 households, a public equivalent to almost twice the size of the city of Porto”.

In addition to the public prosecutor’s office, ProtegeAlentejo has already filed a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for this photovoltaic plant, in December 2023, with the TAF in Beja, against the project promoter and the Portuguese Environment Agency, APA.

Three months later, “there is still no decision from the court,” spokeswoman Liliana Silva revealed on Monday.

In the opinion of the association, made up of a group of residents from the parishes of São Domingos and Vale de Água, among others, who oppose the construction of the photovoltaic plant, the EIS “fails on numerous counts”.

“Right from the start we reinforced the idea that the location of the project didn’t make sense,” as well as “the elimination of 1.5 million trees from a forest made up of eucalyptus trees, which have existed here for 50 years, and other species,” and the fact that “the issue of eliminating a forest mass that captures carbon was never considered,” she added.

In her opinion, “a large part of the project is closely linked to the Data Centre project” by the company Start Campus, which is involved in the Operation Influencer case. (This is the case which led to the resignation of prime minister Antonio Costa and early elections, for suspected influence in getting the Data Centre plans as well as lithium mining plans in the north of the country approved quickly).

“There are documents and evidence that [the plant] was designed to meet the energy needs of the Sines projects, namely the Data Centre and others as well,” argued Liliana Silva.

For its part, Iberdrola, in a written statement sent to the Lusa news agency, guaranteed that it “has no agreement with the Sines Data Centre” of the Start Campus company and said it had “strictly followed all the processes defined for the development of the project”.

The company also explained that “it has been reinforcing its commitment to the energy transition in Portugal by investing in multiple renewable energy production projects”.

Source: Lusa