Investment in renewables doubled in Andalusia to 1.3 billion euros by 2022

The boom in renewable energies has become a reality in Andalusia, where the deployment of projects already reaches the eight provinces without exception. At the beginning of his government, Juanma Moreno assured that he had on his table investments in this sector of over 20,000 million euros.

In these years, some of these projects have fallen by the wayside for various reasons (regulation, lack of network infrastructure to evacuate energy, administrative slowness ...) but many others continue to move forward and the forecast is that they will increase exponentially in this decade.

A good example has been the year 2022, which closed with a record investment in renewable projects, up to 1,300 million euros, as a result of the installation of 1,257 megawatts (MW) 'green', as advanced this week the Minister of Industrial Policy and Energy of the Board, Jorge Paradela, at an event organized by Diario SUR.

The representative of the regional government stressed that last year 50% more renewable power was installed for electricity generation in the Andalusian community compared to 837 megawatts in 2021. Of these 1,257 new renewable MW, almost all corresponded to photovoltaic plants (1,237 MW).

Thanks to these new 1,257 MW, Andalusia reached 10,198 MW of installed renewable power in 2022, after growing by 14% compared to the previous year, which places it as the second autonomous community in green electricity capacity, "maintaining its leadership position in technologies such as solar thermal and biomass, and recovering the second national position in photovoltaics," said the counselor.

According to data accessed by El Confidencial, Granada was the province that had the highest growth last year, with 400 MW of new installed capacity, followed by Cadiz (251 MW), Almeria (219), Jaen (106) and Malaga (102). However, at total level, the largest volume of projects and investments continues to be in Seville, with 2,253 MW installed by the end of 2022, and Cadiz, with 2,207 MW. Both are followed at a distance by Granada (1,208), Malaga (1,093) and Almeria (1,028), while Huelva (942), Cordoba (934) and Jaen (525) close the ranking.

It is to be expected that in the coming years this ratio between the western and eastern areas will be balanced thanks to the new high-capacity network infrastructures that have been inaugurated this past year.

Last year, the number of self-consumption installations tripled in relation to 2021, so that citizens, companies and other entities started up 53,400 new installations, which raises the number of existing self-consumption installations to over 83,000, totaling an installed capacity of 618 MW, and already representing 13% of the total photovoltaic capacity in Andalusia.

The forecasts for this year 2023 and the following years are still very optimistic, especially once the second administrative milestone in the processing of renewable projects has been passed, since the central government had set January 25, 2023 as the deadline for obtaining an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), so that all those projects that did not have this authorization by that date would lose the right of access and connection to the electricity grid and, therefore, could not continue with their processing.

Jorge Paradela has valued the processing effort made by officials of his Ministry and the Ministry of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy, which is directed by Ramón Fernández Pacheco, who have worked hard in recent months to meet this administrative milestone set by the central government, analyzing more than 500 files that totaled a power exceeding 16,200 megawatts (MW). In Andalusia as a whole, the regional government has given favorable environmental authorization to 445 files that may involve the installation of 12,584 MW.

The aspiration is to "turn Andalusia into the first autonomous community in Spain in clean energy production", a deployment that is also associated with investments and employment. "The additional 12,000 MW that we have as a goal for these four years will involve an investment of approximately 12,000 million euros and 30,000 jobs in the construction phase, and will bring us closer to the purpose of supplying 75% of the electricity needs of the region through sustainable generation".

According to the Minister, energy must become "the lever to transform Andalusia" in view of the business, employment and innovation opportunities opened up by the energy transition. And in this area renewable energies are called to play a fundamental role, since "they reduce energy costs and are our great asset to make our companies more competitive and to boost industry in Andalusia, because we are talking about energy as a factor for investment localization".

The boom in renewable energies has become a reality in Andalusia, where the deployment of projects already reaches all eight provinces without exception. At the beginning of his government, Juanma Moreno, assured that he had on his table investments in this sector of over 20,000 million euros.