Have you noticed how many countries I have told you about with plans to go fully renewable in electricity, all-electric in EVs, and carbon-neutral in everything else? Here is another, Spain, with its own plan independent of the EU's proposed trillion euro initiative.
Spain is poised to go fully-renewable by 2050
Spain’s government has announced an ambitious plan: the country’s grid will go fully-renewable by 2050. This radical de-carbonization of its economy over the next 30 years will reduce its greenhouse emissions by a whopping 90% (as compared to 1990 levels).
Poder verde [Green power]
The plan comes as part of Spain’s draft climate change and energy transition law. The current government is committed to installing at least 3,000 megawatts of wind and solar energy, per year, for the next 10 years. It’s a monumental undertaking.
Officials also stated that they’ll ban new licenses for fossil fuel drills, hydrocarbon exploitations, and fracking wells. One-fifth of the state budget will also be earmarked for measures that will curb climate change. This sum will increase from 2025 onwards.
The Spanish government has also scrapped a controversial “sun tax” that hampered the country’s booming renewable energy sector.
The new law mandates the Kingdom of Spain to reach a 35% electricity share for green energy by 2030. A 35% increase in energy efficiency is also planned by that year. Officials also said that government and public sector authorities will only be allowed to lease buildings that are close to being energy self-sufficient.
Mainland Spain ran a full day without burning coal
How did they do that? Well, they were lucky with wind and rain.
The nation’s first day without any coal occurred from 23:50 local time on December 13 until 21:20 on December 15, making December 14 a full day without any coal-fired plants sending electricity to the national grid. The achievement only covered the peninsular system as Spain’s non-mainland area of the Balearic islands continued to use electricity from coal.
On that faithful [sic] day, coal power was scheduled to deliver 252MWh of energy, however, a peak in wind power generation, which hit an hourly average of 16.41GW, encouraged utilities to decouple coal for the day.
Spain, which receives ample sunlight and has an extensive solar energy capacity, nearly didn’t need coal during the summer. However, due to technical constraints in the distribution network in the northern region of Asturias, the country could not go coal-free during this timeframe. Even so, it used very little fossil fuels to generate electricity last summer — only one of 25 coal-fired power units in mainland Spain operated for several days during the summer.
All right!
Spain plans switch to 100% renewable electricity by 2050 — The Guardian
Spain has launched an ambitious plan to switch its electricity system entirely to renewable sources by 2050 and completely decarbonise its economy soon after. By mid-century greenhouse gas emissions would be slashed by 90% from 1990 levels under Spain's draft climate change and energy transition law. Nov 13, 2018
Spain was one of the first countries to deploy large scale solar photovoltaics and as of 2018 the first country for concentrated solar power (CSP) in the world. In 2018, the cumulative total solar power installed was 7,011 MW, of which 4,707 MW were solar PV installations and 2,300 MW were concentrated solar power.
In order to meet Spain's overall target for 20% use of renewable energy (it was just 8.3% in 2005) in gross final energy consumption (20,505 ktoe) by 2020 targets have been set for each sector as follows: 17.3% renewable energy use in the heating and cooling sector, 39% in the electricity sector and 11.3% in the ...
Total renewable: 51.2 GW
Percentage electricity generated by RE: 42.8% ...
Bio Energy: 0.9 GW
Solar Power: 7.3 GW
Energy consumption by sector · Electricity Sector · Transport sector · Sources
The share of renewables in power generation in mainland Spain this year is estimated at 40 per cent, up from 33.7 per cent last year.
Grid operator Red Electrica de Espana (REE) 2018 figures said wind would again be the second most important source with a share of 19.8 per cent after nuclear with 21.4 per cent.
Spain has had a relatively wet year with hydropower rising to 13.7 per cent from 7.4 per cent last year. The share of coal power is anticipated to be down by 2.6 percentage points to 14.5 per cent.
Spain’s minority Socialist government is taking steps to decarbonise by closing most of the country’s major coal mines.
Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has prioritised renewable energy and is working on a climate change law which foresees installing at least 3GW each year to 2030.
At the end of the year, mainland Spain had 98.65 gigawatts of power generation capacity with demand estimated at 254,074 GWh this year, up by 0.6 per cent year-on-year.
Legal sources on renewable energy — Spain
RES LEGAL Europe is the website on regulations on renewable energy generation.
In Spain, the main support scheme (the “Régimen Especial”) operated until the end of 2011 and was suspended at the beginning of 2012. On June 2014, a new support scheme (the “Régimen Retributivo Específico”) was established. The aim was to grant a specific remuneration regime for new renewable energy plants located in the mainland electricity system. The allocation of the referred specific remuneration regime has been done through three competitive call for tenders (as of December 2018).
A contribution mechanism establishing charges on existing and new self-consumption RES plants, both on capacity and generation levels, was in place until October 2018. Under the new regulation approved in October 2018, self-consumption of RES is free from these charges, while procedures for RES self-consumption have been simplified. Furthermore a quota system for biofuels is in place.
RES-E operators are entitled to grid connection, priority dispatch against the grid operator. Furthermore, a plant operator is entitled against the grid operator to an expansion of the grid, if the expansion is required for his plant to be connected to the grid.
Policies for training and certification of solar panel installers are in place. Buildings should satisfy a minimal solar contribution for warm sanitary water. There is also a financial support for large thermal plants in buildings that are supplied from RES. A new RD&D plan (2017 – 2020) aimed at directing support to RES-E, RES-H&C and RES-T has been published.
Spain struggles to regulate renewable energy gold rush — Reuters
Dec 16, 2019 - With productive solar and wind power, Madrid looks to Brussels and beyond for investment in climate projects.
"We must make this transition. There is no other way," said Jose Dominguez Abascal, Spain's secretary of state for energy.
"Today, producing with sun or wind in Spain is half the cost we have on the wholesale [electricity] market in Spain," Dominguez said. "We need two things: money and to convince companies that the status quo must be modified."
Maria Prado, a renewable energy transition campaigner at Greenpeace Spain, said that her country is still "extremely dependent on fossil fuels".
At 74 percent of all energy use, Prado told Al Jazeera that Spain is "still 20 points above the average in Europe. Even though we're on a good path for renewables, it's still far away."
Prado said the renewable energy industry is excited that the new government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has been supportive of its growth, especially when viewed in light of the European Union's recent approval of decentralised electricity generation.
"This year we had 10,000 [solar] installations ... but that's so far away from Germany, Sweden and Denmark," said Prado. "We have the privilege of being the country with the most sun in the Mediterranean."
The massive quantity of applications far exceeds the country's expectations under the National Climate and Energy Plan for 2030.
It will surprise no-one that government bureaucrats suffer from extreme lack of imagination. We are seeing them gradually get educated all around the world.
Nov 11, 2019 - With an average of 300 days of sun per year, the present and future of clean energies in Spain are focused undoubtedly on solar energy. By installing over 4GW of capacity in 2019 (14 times more than in 2018), Spain will lead the solar market in Europe this year, a landmark that illustrates the solar energy sector in the country has already taken off.
But why now, after what can be considered false dawns previously? The global picture has changed.
The Solutions Project: 100% Spain
Residential rooftop solar |
10.2% |
Solar PV plants |
11.9% |
Concentrating solar plants |
4.4% |
Onshore wind |
37.4% |
Offshore wind |
11.9% |
Commercial & government rooftop solar |
11.6% |
Wave devices
|
0.9% |
Geothermal |
0.1% |
Hydroelectric |
11.3% |
Tidal turbines |
0.3% |
40-Year Jobs Created
Number of jobs where a person is employed for 40 consecutive years.
- Construction jobs: 120,121
Health cost savings per year: $79.48B, 2.60% of country GDP
Lives lost to air pollution that we could save each year: 8,585
The transition pays for itself in as little as 1.3 years from air pollution and climate cost savings alone.
Spain - Countries & Regions - IEA
In the electricity sector, Spain has built a reliable power generation fleet and market. Spain is a world leader in integration and of variable renewable energy. IEA commends Spain for improvements in energy policy, but urges a stronger
Ever behind the curve, the IEA suggests
Cross-border connections are seen as essential to unlock Spain’s renewable energy potential and liquefied natural gas regasification capacity, the highest in the EU.
Renewable energy policy and regulation in Spain - Lexology
Aug 28, 2019 - An overview of the policy and regulatory framework for renewable energy in Spain.
In the recent past, Spain undertook a radical systemic overhaul of the legal regime for the renewable energy sector by adopting the following pieces of legislation:
- Royal Decree-Law 9/2013, of 12 July 2013, adopting urgent measures to guarantee the financial stability of the electricity sector (RDL 9/2013);
- Law 24/2013, of 26 December 2013, on the Electricity Sector (Law 24/2013);
- Royal Decree 413/2014, of 6 June 2014, governing the generation of power through renewable energies, generation and waste (RD 413/2014), and establishing the Specific Remuneration Regime (see Section III.i);
- Ministerial Order IET/1045/2014, of 16 June 2014, establishing the remuneration parameters for installations for the generation of power through renewable energies, cogeneration and waste (Order 1045/2014); and
- Ministerial Order IET/1459/2014, of 1 August 2014, approving the remuneration parameters and establishing the award mechanism for the Specific Remuneration Regime for new wind and PV solar installations in the Spanish non-peninsular territories (i.e., the Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla).
Spain unveils ambitious green energy plan | Financial Times
February 2, 2012
Spain's push to become a world leader in renewable energy risks collapsing after the government slammed the brakes on generous subsidies as part of an austerity drive.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government passed a decree on Friday to "temporarily suspend" subsidies for all new wind, solar, co-generation or waste incineration plants as it seeks to curb the public deficit.
The measure will save at least 160 million euros ($210 million) this year, for which the government has received subsidy requests for projects to install 500 megawatts of new capacity, Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria said.
How things change!