Porto, Portugal, July 21, 2025 (Lusa) - The Porto city council has unanimously approved the Climate Action Plan on Monday, after including five suggestions received during the public consultation period.
Speaking to journalists after the private executive meeting, the councillor responsible for the Environment and Climate Transition, Filipe Araújo, considered that this is a “very important” plan for the city, which “has already understood what climate change is”, recalling the floods that affected several houses on the islands of Fontainhas in early 2023.
“It is a comprehensive plan that includes these measures and for which we are earmarking an investment of around €1.7 billion over the coming years,” he added.
CDU councillor Joana Rodrigues said that this plan was “very consensual” and recalled that it could be amended at any time if necessary.
Sérgio Aires, from the Left Bloc, acknowledged that he might have done something different if he had been involved in drafting the plan, but that he would never stray from the version approved today.
“The Climate Action Plan is a good example of how a municipal strategy should be defined,” he praised.
Social Democrat Mariana Ferreira Macedo welcomed the fact that this plan had been put out for public consultation and said that, with regard to mobility, the PSD proposes free public transport for Porto residents.
During the public consultation, which took place between May 6 and June 16, the ‘Porto Municipal Climate Action Plan (PMAC)’ received five submissions resulting in 33 suggestions, five of which were “considered and included as new measures in the PMAC,” according to documents attached to the proposal accessed by Lusa.
The proposals considered relate to changes in the wording of the document on points concerning hydrogen and the electrification of transport; suggestions on encouraging short circuits for healthy and sustainable food production; suggestions for extending the pedestrianisation strategy to areas that are not exclusively tourist areas; measures linked to monitoring the implementation of this plan and also to studying the creation of incentives to make public spaces and the interior of city blocks more permeable.
The plan will now be put to a vote in the Municipal Assembly.
The Climate Action Plan defines the main lines of action to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 and increase climate resilience, divided into two chapters: adaptation and mitigation.
In the adaptation chapter, the plan sets out seven objectives, namely to increase the protection of natural risk zones and vulnerable areas, promote the adaptation of public and private buildings, increase the resilience of public spaces, improve the efficiency of the urban water cycle, increase the efficiency of the city’s warning and emergency systems, improve people’s safety and health conditions and increase climate literacy.
To achieve these objectives, the local authority plans to invest €450 million, of which €174 million will be allocated to public spaces, €120 million to risk areas and €112 million to the water cycle.
In terms of mitigation and, consequently, decarbonisation, the plan sets out 25 objectives in the areas of energy systems, mobility and transport, the environment, waste and the circular economy and green infrastructure and nature-based solutions.
An investment of more than €1.7 billion has been set aside for mitigation, with the local authority investing €423 million between 2019–2023, according to Filipe Araújo in April, when he presented the plan to the executive before it went out for public consultation.
The Municipal Climate Action Plan is the result of the Basic Climate Law, which made it mandatory for local authorities to have a municipal climate action plan.
AFG/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
