Algarve Left Bloc MPs, Jorge Costa and João Vasconcelos, have put the Ministry of the Economy on the spot by asking why a west Algarve solar energy plant is to receive taxpayer-funded subsidies.
The government has been crowing about licensing a new wave of ‘subsidy free’ renewable energy projects, including the recently authorised €220 million solar farm in Alcoutim, so it is a little more than curious that the company, Hyperion, has stated that it will receive taxpayer subsidies for its new 44Kw project in Bensafrim, Lagos.
Hyperion is owned by Pedro Bastos Rezende and João Talone, the latter being a former chief executive of EDP who will know the 'ins and outs' of these ‘money-for-nothing’ subsidy systems for solar projects.
The MPs point out that the current government programme aims to "promote the decentralised production of renewable energy, without the need for subsidies, either for self-consumption or for sale to the network at market prices."
This is exactly what the Secretary of State for Energy, Jorge Seguro Sanches, was saying when he stated in Alcoutim last month that "renewables have reached maturity and are capable of standing alone without requiring consumers to pay an extra cost."
Hyperion plans to install two solar power plants in Bensafrim and stated that the enterprise will be economically viable “with subsidised rates for the sale of energy to the grid,"
The MPs are concerned at the long-term financial effect of subsidies which in this instance could cost the Portuguese taxpayer around €100 million over the next 20 years.
Costa and Vasconcelos also point out that the company supplying the technology for solar projects, Magpower, itself is heavily subsidised and is under an investigation set in action by the same Secretary of State who has been announcing a series of supposedly ‘zero-subsidy’ projects.
João Talone founded Magnum Capital Industrial Partners. Hyperion was founded in 2006 by João Talone and Pedro Bastos Rezende.
As for Talone's links: from 2002 to 2003, he was a Special Commissioner for the Portuguese Government, where he led the unwinding of Investimentos e Participações Empresariais, the Portuguese State Company that owned and controlled the State's largest industrial holdings and participations, selling or transferring nearly €1 billion of assets.
Also during that period, Talone led a project to redesign and restructure the whole Portuguese energy sector. Previous to his commissioning with the Portuguese Government, Talone spent 13 years (1988-2001) with Banco Comercial Português (Millennium BCP) where he served as Executive Board Member.
In 2007, Millennium BCP faced turmoil amid probes of its accounts by Portuguese financial crime investigators, Banco de Portugal and the stock market regulator, CMVM. The preliminary findings of an investigation by the CMVM alleged the existence of several off-shore companies which Millennium BCP could have used to buy its own shares when it increased its capital in 2000 and 2001.
If the taxpayer is to be funding the Hyperion solar plant in Bensafrim, was a deal done to give 'comfort' to Talone's Hyperion while other solar energy investments are launched with no such financial advantage to shareholders?
The Algarve's Left Bloc MPs need to establish the background to the subsidy for Hyperion's output: subsidies that no longer are needed with solar panel costs now so low.