As European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen steps up her focus on sourcing critical raw materials anywhere other than China, Algarve environmental group Aware Algarve has lifted the lid on the price being extracted from Portugal in the name of the green transition.
“The quiet reality behind Portugal’s ‘green transition’ is not clean energy but a race powered by money and secrecy”, says the group.
“On 3 September 2025, the United Nations ruled that Portugal violated international environmental law when it approved the Barroso lithium mine. The Aarhus Convention Committee found that the government withheld key environmental data, restricted public participation, and made it harder for citizens to challenge the project, a landmark verdict.
“The problem isn’t what’s being built, it is how it is being approved in secrecy, at speed, and with shrinking public oversight. Environmental assessments are buried online, released late, and written to confuse. Details about grid routes, cumulative impacts, and habitat loss vanish, leaving citizens with no real way to understand or challenge decisions that reshape their landscapes while faceless corporate beneficiaries move quietly ahead.
“That pattern now repeats with the Albufeira desalination plant, a flagship of Portugal’s water strategy. Plataforma Água Sustentável (PAS) says the public consultation was mishandled, leading the Loulé Administrative Court to suspend the process for procedural irregularities. But the dispute didn’t end there. In October 2025, the court dismissed a lawsuit filed by residents and environmental groups, not because their environmental arguments were weak but because the ruling focused narrowly on how land was taken and valued.
“The Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), backed by the Ministry of Environment and Energy, portrayed the decision as a green light for construction. A move that deflected attention from the money, speed, and secrecy driving Portugal’s current energy agenda.
Environmental lawyer Rui Amores, representing PAS, said at the time that the minister was mistaken in her interpretation. “The ruling, he warned, leaves untouched the deeper flaws in consultation and oversight that have plagued the project from the start. Good water is diverted to industrial use while local communities are left with rising bills and declining water quality. Desalination doesn’t just use water, it devours power.
“Those same flaws ripple through Portugal’s wider energy system. Data centres, hydrogen hubs, and desalination plants are all competing for space on a grid already stretched thin by over promised capacity and under planned expansion. When things go wrong, they go dark. Very dark.
“This is the price of green power. A system strained by overlapping promises of clean energy and endless growth. Behind every fast-tracked approval and fragile network runs a single current, money.
“Portugal’s green transition is fuelled by €22 billion in EU recovery funds, €2.1 billion in European Investment Bank loans in 2024 alone, and a web of private deals worth at least €12 billion. This vast pipeline of cash rewards speed over scrutiny.
“The stakes are enormous. €16.3 billion in EU grants and €5.9 billion in loans are released under strict deadlines and “delivery milestones.” By October 2025, Portugal had already received €13.8 billion, with another €1.06 billion approved. But those payments depend on progress, not performance. If a project slows, the money stops, so approvals come first, accountability never.
“The Albufeira plant shows how it works. Each construction phase unlocks another payout. The faster it moves, the more cash flows.
“And that’s where the profits begin. Speculative investors now drive Portugal’s green build-out, moving early and betting on guaranteed returns once the state signs off. With advance knowledge of approvals, they buy land, cut deals, and lock in profits long before a single panel, turbine, or desalination plant takes shape. Each withheld document or delayed disclosure gives insiders a head start to buy land before zoning shifts, secure contracts before they are public, and cash in on state funding before anyone else even knows it exists.
“Developers, backed by foreign money, rely on state guarantees and cheap energy to protect their profits. Public agencies, underfunded and dependent on project fees, end up serving the very industry they’re meant to police. Oversight is opportunity. Accountability is replaced by access. Secrecy pays better than transparency.
“In the race for green power, the public is no longer part of the process, only the cost. Public money flows through hidden deals to faceless distant investors, while local communities pay again in higher bills and lost land.
“The UN’s Aarhus ruling gives Portugal’s civil society both a warning and a weapon.
Groups like CARE (Committee for Awareness of Responsible Energy), Aware Algarve, and Plataforma Água Sustentável (PAS) are invoking the decision to expose procedural failures and demand the suspension of projects that breach EU and UN law. They are not against renewable energy. They are for responsible energy. Development that follows the law, respects the land, and includes the people who live there.
“Billions are being spent in the name of progress, but the real price of green power is measured elsewhere, in the land that’s lost, the voices left out, and the truth kept from view.
“Aware Algarve calls on citizens to follow the money, question the silence, and decide whether this is the future they were promised.
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sources: Aware Algarve/ Euronews/ PAS
