The Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, announced this Tuesday in Parliament that the Mission Structure for the Licensing of Renewable Energy Projects (EMER 2030) will be abolished. To justify the end of the entity, the government official told deputies that EMER has already fulfilled its objective. However, she had a mandate until December 31, 2030, that is, her duties ended five years ahead of schedule.
“EMER will end. Its creation was a requirement of the PRR. It helped a lot with the transposition of the RED III renewables directive and with the renewable energy acceleration zones. It delivered the work it was supposed to, during the term of the last president it had, but now its work is practically completed. These are PRR milestones that must be fulfilled, and after that, EMER will end”, he announced.
Questioned by deputies about the decision, the minister defended herself, saying that “EMER was not a failure”. The minister participated in a joint hearing of the Environment and Energy Committee with the Budget, Finance and Public Administration Committee, in the Assembly of the Republic, to debate the State Budget for 2026.
The creation of this mission structure was one of the last measures left by the socialist government of António Costa, before leaving power. With Luís Montenegro, the announcement of the creation of EMER came in April 2024, within the scope of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, with a structure of around 30 employees, and with the aim of accelerating the implementation of renewable energy projects through a more transparent, agile and simplified procedural regime, to meet the goals of the National Energy and Climate Plan (PNEC).
In May last year, the minister appointed former PSD deputy Hugo Carvalho to lead the structure in charge of creating and managing the One-Stop Shop for the Licensing and Monitoring of Renewable Energy Projects.
However, after just over a year – and with nothing to predict -, in 2025 Hugo Carvalho asked the minister to leave. Since September 1st, the entity has been without a leader. The former Social Democrat deputy decided to leave office on his own. So far it has not been possible to confirm, with the person himself or with the supervisor, what motivated this request by the person responsible to leave his position.
Hugo Carvalho had a mandate until the end of 2030 and left to accept an invitation to return to the private sector and join a technological project, Expresso learned.
“EMER is a time-limited Mission Structure, which was created to facilitate and make the licensing of renewable energy projects more transparent. With its President, Hugo Carvalho, having fulfilled all the goals and the work assigned to him, and which is now being incorporated into legislation, the Ministry of Environment and Energy accepted his resignation and the desire to embrace new challenges”, an official source from the Ministry of Environment and Energy explained to Expresso at the time.
The Mission Structure for the Licensing of Renewable Energy Projects 2030 (EMER 2030) was created by Resolution of the Council of Ministers no. 50/2024, of March 26, with the aim of “decentralizing and streamlining the licensing of renewable energy projects in Portugal”. Among its main objectives, the following stand out: the implementation of a one-stop shop for project licensing; consolidation of the legal framework for the renewable energy sector; and the creation of an effective monitoring system, which allows the monitoring and control of projects under development.