From the morning of May 7 to the afternoon of May 11, Portugal’s electricity consumption was fully covered by renewable sources. For 107 hours, Portugal powered all of its electricity from biofuels, hydropower plants, wind turbines, solar panels, and geothermal heat. But this is not the first time that Portugal has boasted an impressive energy statistic. (…)

“How did Portugal assume such impressive leadership in the clean energy transition?” asks WorldWatch Institute. “The key, as usual, lies in ambitious supportive policies.”

Feed-in tariffs, which provide renewable electricity producers with a guaranteed price for each megawatt-hour of energy fed into the country’s power grid, were first introduced in 1988 and have continued to develop, according to WorldWatch. Also, host municipalities of renewable energy receive payments of 2.5 percent of revenue. And the government bought transmission lines from private power companies at the turn of the century, refitting the grid infrastructure to better connect with small electricity generators such as domestic solar panels.  (…)

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