The Councils That Host Portugal's Wind and Solar Want Paying for It, and They Have Just Won a Formula for Splitting the IMI

The councils that host Portugal's dams, wind farms and solar parks met in Coimbra on Friday and agreed, unanimously, that they are not being paid enough for it. The renewable-energy section of the Associação Nacional de Municípios Portugueses came away with one concrete win and a list of demands aimed squarely at the government.

The win is fiscal. The municipalities approved a proposal from the Tax Authority on how to divide the IMI revenue generated by renewable generation infrastructure that sits in more than one municipality. The existing law has made that split difficult whenever a dam, a wind park or a photovoltaic plant crosses a boundary, and the ANMP has been pressing for objective criteria. The solution now accepted is intended to produce a faster and fairer distribution, with specific rules for each type of installation.

The councils also welcomed a Tax Authority circular on how wind and solar plants are valued and taxed for IMI purposes, which clarifies that electricity-generating centres count as urban industrial buildings. That classification is what makes them assessable at all, and therefore taxable in a predictable way.

"Not against the transition"

The section's president, Ana Rita Dias, who is also mayor of Vila Pouca de Aguiar in the Vila Real district, framed the meeting as "a victory of the territories and of the municipalities" and was careful about how the demands should be read.

"The municipalities are not against the energy transition. On the contrary, they have been fundamental in making it happen," she said. "What we defend is that this transition be made with territorial justice, with planning, with respect for municipal autonomy and with concrete benefits for the populations and for the territories that support these infrastructures."

A seat at the table, and a share of the carbon

Also unanimously, the councils decided the ANMP will ask the government to place it on the Comissão Técnica de Acompanhamento, the technical committee responsible for decisions on Portugal's renewable acceleration zones. Those zones determine where fast-tracked projects can be built, and the association wants "an active voice in a process that will have a direct impact on their territories".

Two further requests concern carbon. The municipalities want to be notified of any project registered in their area that generates carbon credits, on transparency grounds, and they have asked for a study into a model for sharing the benefits of those projects territorially, so that the places absorbing emissions reductions see some of the value.

Finally, on the rents payable under Decreto-Lei 424/83, the councils restated the obvious position of a landlord: the use of municipal resources and municipal land should carry an adequate corresponding compensation, and those rents should keep being applied and updated.

What this means for expats

• Your council's finances may be about to change: if you live near a dam, wind farm or solar park that straddles a boundary, the IMI it generates should now be split by rule rather than argued over.
• Acceleration zones remain contested: councils have already pushed back locally, as when Sabugal rejected two planned zones over fire and land fears.
• The map has already shrunk: Portugal's green map for solar and wind fell from 7 percent of the mainland to 4 percent, with each council held to 1 percent of its own land.
• Build-out continues regardless: in August, solar touched a new peak of 3,850 megawatts even as the country imported 36 percent of the power it used.
• Expect the argument to reach planning applications: a council with a seat on the acceleration-zone committee is a council with more leverage over what gets built next to you.