PORTUGAL Law and Practice Contributed by: Assunção Cristas, Catarina Pinto Correia and Carolina Vaza, VdA
CCDRs are to approve the local climate change plans within two years, and the law anticipates the approval of an assessment mechanism. Although not in strict compliance with the two-year calendar, an increas - ing number of municipalities have put in place their climate plans or, at least, submitted them to public consultation. It should be noted that Lisboa, Porto and Guimarães are three of the 100 European cities that have assumed a commitment to become climate neutral by 2030. National Policy and Legal Regime – Mitigation In Portugal, as mentioned in 2.1 National Climate Change Policy , there are several policy/regulatory instruments to achieve climate change goals. In order to achieve the above mentioned goals, there are also domestic regulations setting important rules on cli - mate change/greenhouse gas emissions matters, such as: • Decree-Law No 4/2024, which establishes the voluntary carbon market and lays down the rules for its operation; • three ordinances published on 2 October 2024 to regulate three key aspects of the functioning of the voluntary carbon market: the amounts of the fees to be charged for acts that are a prerequisite for the activity of voluntary carbon markets agents (opening an account, registering projects and credit transactions); the qualification criteria for carrying out the role of independent project veri - fier (the sectors of activity, the requirements and procedures for entering the role); and the general requirements of the electronic registration platform, ie, the functionalities this platform must offer and the mandatory information to be entered into it, particularly by market agents; • Decree-Law No 12/2020, which establishes Portu - gal’s carbon trading scheme; and • Decree-Law No 145/2017, which establishes mechanisms to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Although Decree-Law No 4/2024 entered into force on 6 January 2024, the voluntary carbon market is still under development. The regulatory developments that took place last year, ie, the ordinances mentioned above, were approved to define the rules for the cer -
tification of independent verifiers and the creation of an online platform for the public registration of car - bon projects and respective carbon credits. Regarding the approval of carbon methodologies, the Technical Monitoring Committee of the Voluntary Carbon Market developed the first carbon methodology focused on new forestations. This methodology establishes the requirements and guidelines for quantifying the net benefits of activities that sequester carbon by creat - ing new forests in Portugal and was subject to pub - lic consultation. The methodology specifies rules for project eligibility, the methods for calculating the net effects of an afforestation project on greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 removals from the atmosphere, the procedures for assessing the risk of reversal of sequestered carbon and the approaches for monitor - ing and reporting on the respective projects. After the public consultation analysis, the adjust - ment of the proposed methodology and subsequent approval by the Climate Agency is expected. On the regulated carbon market side, under the European ETS, the operators subject to Decree-Law No 12/2020 must hold a permit allowing them to emit greenhouse gases and are obliged to monitor their emissions. Oth - er activities are not subject to climate targets as a pre - requisite for environmental permits. Nevertheless, if an entity applies for public funding, namely within the European Funds system, it is an increasingly common requirement that it complies with the “do no significant harm” principle. This requirement applies, for example, to the use of funds within the EU-funded Resilience and Recovery Plan. With regards to taxation of pollut - ing activities, new carbon taxes for air and ship travel were approved by Ministerial Order 38, amended by Ministerial Orders 110/2023 and 242/2023. These amendments extended the scope of the carbon tax to air travel on small aircraft, while clarifying that only passenger air transport is taxed. Additionally, values of tax rates for oil and energy products were reviewed by Ministerial Order 111 A/2022, and subsequently by Ministerial Order 164 A/2022 and Ministerial Order 167-D/2022, with several amendments thereafter. National Policy and Legal Regime – Adaptation The Portuguese Climate Framework Law establish - es climate policy instruments which are specifically designed for dealing with climate change adaptation.
82 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook