António Costa conveyed this position on the first of his two days of presence at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), which will take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, until the 18th.

The prime minister, whose keynote speech before COP27 is scheduled for late Tuesday morning, anticipated that he will not only reaffirm the environmental goals assumed by the country in 2016, in Marrakech, but also prepare to “announce the new goals”, which in Portugal resulted from the Climate Law approved in the Assembly of the Republic.

“The objective is not only to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 – and we were the first country in the world to assume this goal at the COP in Marrakech [in 2016] – but also, as provided for in the law, to study and do everything to anticipate for 2045 this result”, he declared.

According to the leader of the Portuguese executive, the country is in a position to assume this new goal, “since it managed to close its coal plants in two years”.

António Costa then pointed out that Portugal “has defined a national strategy for hydrogen that will help industry, which is very dependent on natural gas”.

“Industry will be able to have an alternative source of energy. This will be decisive for this transition to be successful and so that, in the long term, we stop being importers of fossil fuels and can be exporters of green energy”, he maintained.