EDP says it can’t close Sines central before 2030

The responsible for the Sustainability Department of EDP, António Martins da Costa, has reassured this Monday that Sines’ thermoelectric plant will be closed until the year of 2030, refusing to anticipate a specific deadline for it to happen.

“Our plant in Sines will be closed by 2030”, he stated, adding that is a dossier that needs to be dealt carefully as it “ensures the stabilisation of Portugal’s entire power grid, namely in the South”.

Martins da Costa also said that even if EDP closes its thermal power station earlier, it would have to buy energy from Spain, which would have, for instance, to increase its production and, therefore, increasing the carbon emissions.

The closing of the thermoelectric plant has to be part of an “integrated movement”, Martins da Costa said in a debate that followed the projection of Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest documentary, “Ice on Fire”, about the consequences of global warming due to human action.

Last 24th of May, the Portuguese government expressed its intention to close the country’s second thermoelectric plant, situated in the village of Pego, by 2022. The deadline for the closing of both plants is 2030. “My wish is to close the soonest possible Sines, but we will only be able to do it as long as renewable energy’s production is enough to guarantee our energetic security”, the Minister of Environment, Joao Pedro Matos Fernandes, said at the time.