Lisbon council has announced it is drawing up plans for a solar plant that will take shape in the Carnide neighbourhood to charge vehicles in its municipal fleet, such as buses and rubbish trucks.

Lisbon Environment Councillor José Sá Fernandes told news radio station TSF that the council is following the line of thinking that “fossil fuel has to be replaced with local clean fuel, and so we will have a solar plant in Lisbon to supply electric buses”.
Describing the ambitious project as “a measure of great impact”, he explained it falls under the umbrella of the European Green Capital award, which the Portuguese capital won and will be donning the title in 2020, under the banner Lisbon 2020.
Councillor Sá Fernandes said the clean energy created through the solar plant will feed “the fleet of electric buses that [municipal public transport company] Carris will buy”.
Lisbon’s rubbish trucks are also to be solar powered.
Speaking to TSF, José Sá Fernandes announced the solar plant will take shape in Carnide and “soon we will launch the tender. We are just waiting for the license from the Directorate General for Energy”.
The plant will produce two mega watts, which is enough to supply one thousand houses, and will be installed over an area of one thousand square metres.
However, “this plant will be explored by the municipality since it is intended to supply the city’s fleet,” Sá Fernandes reiterated.
In his view, the solar plant “will boost Lisbon in a way that is different from any other”, and he believes it is “perfectly exportable to other cities because they can have a local solar power station in one place and the buses elsewhere”.
Lisbon 2020 will also see the Portuguese capital gain its own recycled water network to clean the streets, as well as a drainage plan to avoid flooding, which is hoped to be implemented by 2020.
“Work on the drainage plan will be ongoing but the natural-based retention basins will all be ready because the sites are currently being finished off. At this very moment, we are working on sites in the Alcântara valley and the Praça da Espanha, and we hope they will be finished [by 2020] too”, he stressed.
Work on sites in Ameixoeira is also nearing completion and in Paço do Lumiar work begins in three months.