There is something almost metaphorically Azorean about drawing energy from beneath the earth. These are islands born of fire, lifted from the Atlantic by geological forces that remain present beneath pasture, hydrangea and basalt, and it seems fitting that part of their contemporary search for sustainability should descend into that ancient subterranean inheritance. Geothermal energy is, in a sense, another form of memory: the earth remembering the forces that created it. Yet the latest figures on renewable electricity in the Azores also remind us that possessing extraordinary natural resources and transforming them into a new energy economy are not quite the same thing. During the first six months of 2026, renewable sources accounted for 31.5 percent of all electricity generated in the archipelago. It is a meaningful share, certainly, but also a figure that suggests how much of the Azorean energy transition remains unfinished.
According to the July Renewable Electricity Bulletin released by the Portuguese Renewable Energy Association (APREN), total electricity production in the Azores between January and June reached 437.8 gigawatt-hours. Of that electricity, 31.5 percent came from renewable sources. Geothermal power remained the great renewable pillar of the regional system, accounting by itself for 18.8 percent of all electricity generated, while wind contributed another 7.8 percent. Together, the two sources reveal something distinctive about the Azorean energy landscape. Unlike territories where decarbonisation is principally being written across enormous solar fields or through vast hydroelectric systems, the islands possess an energy vocabulary profoundly connected to their own geography: the wind that crosses the Atlantic without borders and the volcanic heat stored beneath the ground.
Geothermal power is especially compelling because it transforms one of the defining geological characteristics of the islands into infrastructure for the future. The volcano, traditionally imagined through eruption, destruction and geological instability, acquires another identity: reservoir, resource, possibility. The same subterranean heat that reminds the Azores of their geological youth can become electricity flowing quietly into homes, schools, hospitals and businesses. There is poetry in that transformation, but there is also public policy. Nature provides potential; societies must create the knowledge, investment, technology and political continuity capable of turning potential into durable progress.
And the figures invite comparison. During the same six-month period, renewable sources represented 46.1 percent of electricity production in Madeira, substantially above the Azorean figure of 31.5 percent. Madeira produced a total of 488.9 GWh, with hydroelectric power responsible for 19.5 percent of generation and wind for 16.7 percent. The two Atlantic autonomous regions therefore reveal different renewable geographies: Madeira drawing heavily upon water and wind, the Azores upon geothermal energy and wind. Their landscapes dictate different possibilities, and any serious energy policy must begin by respecting precisely those differences rather than imagining that the same technological formula can simply be transferred from one territory to another.
The comparison with mainland Portugal is even more striking, although APREN itself makes clear that the regional first-semester figures should not be directly compared with the July data presented for the mainland. During July alone, renewable sources supplied 70.5 percent of electricity generated in mainland Portugal—2,554 GWh out of total production of 3,611 GWh. Solar photovoltaic energy became the largest individual source during the month, representing 25.8 percent of production, followed by hydroelectricity at 21.0 percent and wind at 17.7 percent. Between January and July, renewable incorporation in mainland electricity production reached 75 percent.
The national numbers place Portugal among Europe’s renewable-energy leaders. According to APREN, the country ranked fourth among the European countries analysed for renewable penetration in electricity generation during the first seven months of 2026, behind Norway, at 97.3 percent, Denmark, at 94.3 percent, and Austria, at 78.9 percent. Even more evocative is another statistic: during those seven months, mainland Portugal experienced 694 non-consecutive hours in which renewable generation was sufficient to cover the entirety of electricity consumption. Gather those scattered hours together and they become approximately 29 complete days—a month, almost, during which wind, water, sun and other renewable sources were capable of satisfying the country’s electrical appetite.
Numbers such as these possess an economic dimension that is sometimes obscured by the environmental language surrounding the energy transition. APREN estimates that renewable electricity production between January and July allowed Portugal to avoid approximately €667 million in natural-gas imports and €374 million in electricity imports. The association also calculates savings of €423 million in carbon-emission allowances, associated with 6.1 million tonnes of avoided CO₂-equivalent emissions. Renewable energy, therefore, is not simply a response to climate change. It is also a question of economic sovereignty, trade balances, energy security and resilience in a world where dependence upon imported fossil fuels can quickly become dependence upon geopolitical circumstances far beyond the control of small countries and still smaller island territories.
For the Azores, that question assumes an even deeper importance. Islands understand dependence with a particular clarity. Almost everything that must cross an ocean carries with it the vulnerability of distance: cost, weather, transport, international markets, supply chains and political instability. Energy is no exception. Every additional unit of electricity produced sustainably from resources already present in the islands potentially diminishes that external vulnerability. Wind does not have to be imported. Neither does volcanic heat. The Atlantic does not send an invoice for blowing across a ridge, nor does the earth demand payment for the heat stored beneath an island. What does carry a cost is the human capacity to capture those resources intelligently—and to build the infrastructure necessary to transform them into dependable energy.
This is where the figure of 31.5 percent becomes more than an achievement to be celebrated. It becomes a question.
What should the Azorean electricity system look like ten, twenty or thirty years from now?
The answer cannot simply be “more renewables,” however desirable that objective may be. Island electricity systems possess constraints of scale, storage, grid stability, geography and demand that make the transition considerably more complicated than percentages alone suggest. Nine islands also mean distinct energy systems and distinct possibilities. What makes sense geothermally on an island with exploitable resources may not be available elsewhere. What is achievable through wind on one island may encounter different technical or environmental limitations on another. Solar power, storage, network modernisation and new technologies must therefore form part of an energy strategy conceived not for an abstract territory, but for nine particular pieces of land scattered across hundreds of kilometres of Atlantic.
Recent developments already suggest that this transition is extending beyond the islands traditionally associated with the largest renewable projects. New wind-generation initiatives for Santa Maria and Flores, for example, reinforce the principle that smaller islands must also participate in the transformation. This matters enormously. The energy transition cannot become another process through which scale concentrates investment in the largest population centres while peripheral communities are asked merely to admire progress from afar. In an archipelago, sustainability must also mean territorial equity.
There is another reason the Azorean transition deserves particular attention. The islands possess the possibility of becoming something more interesting than consumers of technologies developed elsewhere. Their scale, isolation and diversity can make them laboratories for understanding how small electrical systems integrate renewable generation, storage and intelligent management. What appears to be a disadvantage—the fragmented geography of nine islands—can under certain circumstances become an extraordinary field of experimentation. Each island can teach something different about the relationship between renewable resources, local demand, technological innovation and environmental limits.
But experimentation requires ambition, and ambition requires continuity. Energy policy unfolds across decades, not electoral seasons. Infrastructure conceived today may determine patterns of dependence or independence for generations. The challenge is therefore to move beyond individual projects toward a coherent idea of what energy autonomy might realistically mean for the Azores—not necessarily absolute self-sufficiency, but a sustained reduction in fossil-fuel dependence through the intelligent use of resources the islands themselves possess.
At the end of June, renewable sources represented 79.5 percent of Portugal’s installed electricity-generation capacity, and renewable capacity had increased by 9,143 megawatts since 2016. Behind those figures lies one of the great transformations of contemporary Portugal. The Azores belong to that national transformation, but their pathway cannot simply imitate the mainland’s. Their geography demands another imagination.
Perhaps geothermal energy offers the most beautiful symbol of what that imagination might become. Beneath the apparent tranquillity of the islands lies an extraordinary reserve of geological history: heat generated in darkness, invisible beneath fields and roads and towns, the ancient fire from which the archipelago itself emerged. Above ground, meanwhile, the Atlantic wind crosses cliffs and pastures as it has done for centuries. These are not imported resources. They belong to the elemental biography of the islands.
The question is whether the Azores can convert that biography into destiny.
Thirty-one and a half percent renewable electricity is already part of the answer. But it should not be mistaken for the conclusion. The more compelling story is still being written—in turbines turning against the Atlantic sky, in geothermal wells descending toward the island’s primordial heat, in technologies not yet fully deployed, and in the political imagination required to understand that sustainability for an archipelago is ultimately about more than producing cleaner electricity.
It is about learning to inhabit islands without exhausting them, to modernize without severing the ancient relationship between human life and landscape, and to discover, in the very forces that created these fragments of land in the Atlantic, some of the energy with which to carry them into the future.
Based on a story in Diário dos Açores-Paulo Viveiros, director. Photo from DA.