Portugal’s electricity production last month was largely led by hydro and wind power, according to a new report.
Portugal has topped the EU leaderboard for renewable electricity thanks to surges in hydro and wind power.
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According to the Portuguese Association for Renewable Energies (APREN), a staggering 80.7 per cent of electricity generated in January 2026 came from renewable energy.
It marks the best record in nine months, since Portugal suffered a mass blackout that triggered nationwide chaos, and bumps the country up to second in Europe overall. Non-EU Norway came first, with 96.3 per cent renewable electricity production last month, while Denmark dropped to third place with 78.8 per cent*.
Portugal leads the renewable energy race
Portugal’s electricity production was led by hydropower, which accounted for 36.8 per cent of its overall mix. This was closely followed by wind (35.2 per cent) while solar represented 4.4 per cent.
There were 210 non-consecutive hours in which renewable production was sufficient to cover all national consumption.
According to APREN, the incorporation of these sources allowed an estimated saving of €703 million compared to production with natural gas power plants.
Will green energy prevent another mass blackout?
Last year, the majority of the Iberian Peninsula was plunged into chaos by an unprecedented blackout that left around 60 million people without power.
On 28 April, a total loss of the power supply disrupted metro networks, traffic lights, mobile services and emergency systems in Portugal and Spain - leaving thousands stranded and halting businesses. It has since been described as Europe’s “most significant power system event” in over two decades.
Around 15 gigawatts (GW) of electricity-generating capacity (equivalent to around 60 per cent of Spain’s power demand at the time) dropped off the system within just five seconds. It took over 12 hours to restore most electricity supplies across the two countries, and resulted in the death of at least four people.
Two parents and their adult son are said to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning after using a generator during the blackout.
The mass outage sparked dubious claims around the EU’s race towards a green energy transition, with many media outlets blaming renewable energy and ‘net zero’ for the blackouts.
However, an official probe into the blackout actually blamed errors at conventional power plants and “bad planning” by the grid operator.
Experts attributed the root cause of the incident to “cascading overvoltage”, a technical event in which one power spike triggers additional spikes, spreading through the power network like a chain reaction. The problem, in layman’s terms, is the grid’s inability to reboot the system automatically.
Rana Adib, executive director of the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), says the Iberian Peninsula blackout was a wake-up call to speed up the modernisation of the existing grid.
“As renewable energy grows, system resilience must grow with it,” Adib adds. “This means planning holistically: for supply, infrastructure, flexibility and demand - and ensuring strong multi-stakeholder collaboration from the start.”
Can Europe’s grid keep up with the green energy boom?
According to a 2025 report by energy firm Aurora, Europe’s power grid is increasingly becoming the “bottleneck” to achieving net zero due to a lack of investment. The European Commission says power grid investments of €584 billion are needed by 2030 to meet targets.
The grid, which carries electricity to homes and businesses, was never designed for solar and wind farms - which are often built in remote areas - and was first built around large, centralised fossil-fuel power stations.
This means the EU has no issue generating green power, but does have a problem when it comes to moving that power around. It’s why the UK notoriously turns off its wind turbines when the grid gets congested, effectively wasting energy, and why Poland has repeatedly wasted energy generated by solar panels.
*Based on European markets analysed by APREN.
