Portugal’s 2025 Energy Crunch: Demand Spikes and CO2 Soars

Portugal's electricity grid finished 2025 with a climate hang-over it did not expect. Consumption leaped to its highest level ever, but new wind turbines and solar parks failed to keep pace, opening the door for fossil gas plants to fill the gap and pumping an extra million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

Key points at a glance

• 53.1 TWh of power used in 2025, a 3.2 % rise in a single year.

• Renewable output hit 37 TWh, yet growth was all but flat compared with 2024.

• Fossil gas generation soared 54 %, reaching 7.9 TWh.

• The clean-power share slipped from ≈70 % to 68 %, ending a seven-year climb.

• Carbon intensity grew to 97 g CO₂eq/kWh, up from 80 g in 2024.

• A late-April black-out forced more gas onto the grid for security reasons.

• The jump jeopardises Portugal’s 2030 decarbonisation pathway under the PNEC.

• Environmental group ZERO says the episode proves the need for storage and grid upgrades.

Record demand collides with flat renewables

Shops stayed open later, heat-pumps became mainstream, and data-centres mushroomed around Lisbon and Porto. The result was record-breaking electricity demand that reached 53.1 TWh. While the figure looks modest beside Spain’s 250 TWh, it is significant for a country of 10 M people. At the same time, wind fleets aged, new solar auctions slowed under permitting bottlenecks, and drought clipped hydro reservoirs. The consequence was a renewable growth plateau that left the system short of clean megawatt-hours just when they were most needed.

The climate cost: 1 M tonnes of CO₂

The Portuguese power sector had lowered emissions for five consecutive years. That streak ended abruptly as operators dispatched gas-fired turbines for 32 winter and 21 summer days when renewables under-performed. Grid data compiled by REN indicate an additional 1 M t of carbon dioxide compared with 2024. Globally, the Global Carbon Budget 2025 projects fossil-fuel emissions will touch 38.1 Bn t, so Portugal’s reversal looks small in absolute terms but large relative to its own footprint and its leadership claims inside the EU.

Why the grid leaned on gas

Several overlapping factors converged:

Permitting delays for solar plants pushed at least 1 GW of capacity into 2026.

A 28 April system black-out prompted the operator to hold gas units on hot standby for weeks.

Interconnection limits with Spain meant cheap surplus power across the border could not flow south fast enough.

Hydro reservoirs sat at 58 % of capacity, well below the 10-year average.

The absence of large-scale battery storage forced the market operator to rely on flexible—but polluting—gas turbines after sunset.

Government’s 2026 playbook

Lisbon insists the setback is temporary. The Environment and Energy Ministry’s budget will rise 4.9 % to €2.495 B next year, earmarking funds for:

• Adding 3 GW of new solar and wind by December 2026.

• Tripling utility-scale battery storage incentives.

• Fast-tracking grid connections through a one-stop licensing portal.

• Upgrading cross-border interconnectors to 3 GW by 2028.

• Creating a €15 M agricultural efficiency scheme so farmers can self-produce power.The aim is to restore a ≥80 % renewable share well before the PNEC 2030 milestone.

What analysts say needs to change

Specialists from universities, grid operators and NGOs converge on five priorities:

Modernise wind parks whose turbines are older than 15 years.

Push solar permitting times below 180 days.

Deploy at least 1 GWh of batteries every year this decade.

Introduce market signals that reward demand-side flexibility at peak hours.

Strengthen Iberian grid redundancy so single-country incidents do not force fossil fallback.Failure on these fronts, they warn, could turn 2025’s anomaly into a trend that undermines Portugal’s credibility in Brussels.

Bottom line

A single year of higher gas-fired generation does not derail Portugal’s climate ambitions, but it exposes a fragile balancing act: demand is rising faster than clean supply, and storage is scarce. Unless permitting hurdles tumble and new renewables accelerate, the nation risks trading its reputation for leadership in exchange for costlier power and higher emissions.