Catalonia is further away today than two years ago from meeting its goals for 2030 of green electricity production. The warning has come this week from the Observatory of Renewable Energies of Catalonia, made up of the main companies and organizations in this sector. This body calculates that only 20% of the power that should be installed within seven years has been reached. The regulatory brakes have been relaxed, but not the obstacles that perpetuate the approval of the projects nor the local rejection that each of these generates, which according to this report is cooling the interest of promoters for investing in Catalonia. The resistance to the approval of the wind farm of the gulf of roses They are an example that is repeated over and over again.
Catalonia comes from more than a decade of disregarding in practice, despite all the rhetoric about sustainability, the deployment of renewable energies. Defenders of ‘renewables yes, but not like this’ do not present viable alternatives: and sacrificing economic growth through degrowth is not. Even more inconsistent is turning a blind eye to the reality that the brake on renewables means in practice consolidating a model of a country that is 50% dependent on the electricity generated by its nuclear power plants. It is no less inconsistent to deny both the installation of wind or photovoltaic plants here and the laying of high voltage lines that increase the interconnection with neighboring communities with greater generation capacity.
He decree approved in 2021 by the Generalitat was a first step to get out of this inherited stagnation, and has effectively served to increase the figures for installed power. But the rest of the social and bureaucratic brakes continue to be over there. Except for self-consumption, the rate of project processing is still insufficient, and its volume pales in comparison to the dynamism of Spain as a whole and the real needs of the Catalan economy. Because not only does one stop contributing to the general objectives of the energy transition, but also lost employment and investment opportunities.
The new National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC), which the Government presented this Wednesday but which must be approved by the Executive that comes out of the 23J elections, calculates that investments worth 294,000 million euros must be carried out by 2030 . If fulfilled, half a million jobs would be generated by 2030. Some data show the extent to which Catalonia is still disconnected from this effort: the PNIEC forecasts 105,000 more MW of renewable electricity in 2030 and they are currently being processed in the whole of State 65,000 MW. In Catalonia, 14,000 MW are pending approval and of these, according to the sector, only 12% of wind farms and 28% of photovoltaic farms are being processed effectively.
The administrative inertias and even less the fear of paying electoral costs they cannot be an excuse. And defending the conservation without alterations of the natural landscape of each parcel of the territory cannot be above the contribution to an energy transition without which no ecosystem on the planet will be safe. Something that will always be easier to assume with measures of mitigation of negative effects about the natural environment or fairly compensating local communities who see how their territory will be put at the service of all.