Wind energy loses 'in extremis' access permits for 9,000 MW projects

The Government has managed to save in extremis around 15,000 million of investment in renewables (14,800 MW), but the expiration of the access and connection permits has also meant that a significant number of projects have definitively lost their access permits, mainly due to the rejections of the autonomous administrations.

According to sources from the Spanish Wind Energy Association, the sector's forecast is that around 9,000 MW have been left out of these permits, while another 9,500 MW have obtained the necessary permits to go ahead.

During the presentation in Madrid of the World Energy Outlook 2022 (WEO 2022), prepared by the International Energy Association (IEA), organized by the Spanish Energy Club (Enerclub), the Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, warned renewable plant developers that they "must work from the outset" to address "the concern and social benefit of local communities".

In this way Ribera responded to the criticism of various political forces to the last royal decree-law with measures to reduce the impact of the war in Ukraine, validated the day before yesterday by the Congress of Deputies, for reducing the administrative procedures to build renewable plants.

According to the Vice-president, this reduction of the processing times will be carried out taking into account "the environmental and social weight" of these facilities, because it is "fundamental that we can always count on the social support of this process".

In this line, she assured that "being more agile in no case should mean being less safe or relaxing our environmental caution" and reminded that in order to be processed the projects need to have access to the evacuation network. Ribera also took the opportunity to remind that "it is very difficult to have social support or industrial support if we intend to transform our energy system on the basis of the price of natural gas. It is unfeasible.

For his part, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, stated that "the policies put in place by governments are producing an acceleration of the transition with an unprecedented increase in clean technologies" and explained that "global investment in clean energy could exceed 2 trillion dollars (2,000 million euros) annually by 2030, which represents an increase of more than 50% over current levels".