Since the beginning of the year, Portugal has had its first fully dedicated climate agency. The Climate Agency will be responsible for adapting the country to climate change, coordinating the decarbonization efforts of various sectors and managing climate policies and funds more effectively.
The government recently created the Climate Agency, the first in the country to be entirely dedicated to climate issues. The agency will have a team of 120 to 130 employees and, although it began its work on January 1st, it will still have two months to make the transition.
The main functions of the Climate Agency will be to lead, propose and implement environmental policies, mitigate and adapt the country to climate change at national and local level, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and coordinate decarbonization in the sectors of industry, buildings, transport, agriculture and forestry policies.
In addition, the body will devote part of its work to developing and monitoring the National Energy and Climate Plan (PNEC2030), carrying out the functions of the National Authority for European Emissions Trading (CELE) – which was under the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) – and supervising the carbon markets, the voluntary carbon market, European emissions trading and the cross-border emissions mechanism.
The agency will also participate in international climate-related negotiations, whether with the European Union (EU) or the United Nations, and will manage international financial commitments in the context of climate action (including commitments resulting from the Paris Agreement).
The new entity will also absorb the management of all national and international funds related to the environment and energy, including the Environmental Fund, the Blue Fund, the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) in the areas of climate, environment and energy, the Social Climate Fund (planned from 2026), the Modernization Fund, the Just Transition Fund and the EEA Grants.
In the decree published on December 31 in the Portuguese Government’s Official Gazette, it states that the agency, “endowed with technical and financial resources appropriate to the scale of the climate challenge”, was created to “respond to the most ambitious objectives in terms of climate action and to ensure a greater capacity to respond to the problems mentioned”.
The Climate Agency will work alongside the Ministry of the Environment and will be coordinated by the sector’s minister, Maria da Graça Carvalho. “We want this agency to be open to society, promoting joint actions with the public administration, academia, NGOs, companies and other agents of civil society”, as well as “protocols with public and private entities to achieve climate goals”, the minister explained in a press conference.
Applications for the European Climate Pact Ambassadors are open until October 31st. If you are passionate about climate action and want to inspire your community,
This article addresses an action that promotes the adoption of urgent measures to fight climate change and its impacts. SDG 13 also aims to improve education on climate change mitigation and impact reduction.
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