Paying off for who? According TFA, the Portuguese government sold off the rights to the electricitiy to private companies. The government is also paying a massive subsidy to the private companies for 15 years. So the people of Portugal get to pay higher (15%) electric costs while the companies get to export energy to other nations. I'm sure you're right that there is nothing to gripe about.

So the government seized the private wealth of individuals to create really expensive new energy which, according to TFA, increase Portueguese energy costs by 15% on top of the exorbitant (2x the US) rate they already paid. So the Portueguese got reamed twice - once to pay for it, and again to pay to maintain it.

Also, since money is a rough proxy for emissions, and the project costs so much, its reasonable to conclude that the "clean" energy is in fact more polluting than fossil fuels which are a fraction of the price. This is particularly applicable to Europe where, according TFA, the emissions trading system builds the costs of emissions into the fuel.

The link in the main article is paraphrased from http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/45nm_techn ology.htm