Any renewable energy debate needs to start with two ideas that have fallen out of focus in recent weeks. In the first place, the profound climate crisis we find ourselves in, which is getting worse year by year, jeopardizing the possibility of a dignified life for the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants, especially the most vulnerable.
The role of renewable energy is key to combating the climate crisis, because secondly, we must not forget that 80% of the energy we consume is fossil fuels that we import from other regions of the world and burning them does not only cause climate change Types of contamination at the local level and quite a few areas of slaughter. Ignoring this fact in the debate can lead to many misunderstandings. Of course, there is a need to reduce the energy consumption of our societies, but this huge dependence on fossil fuels explains the need to electrify numerous processes and activities and the urgency to produce more renewable energy to power them.
A third issue to consider, and which pollutes everything, is that this ecological transition must develop within a neoliberal capitalism with a deeply oligopolistic energy sector whose sole concern is making short-term gains. On the tragic downside, while new tailwinds blow for an enterprising state, industrial policies and public intervention in crucial sectors, we have no time until a new order arrives. The ecological transition and the exit from neoliberalism must happen simultaneously. That is the great task and the great challenge of our generation.
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In this climatic and political context, a complex controversy is taking place about the necessary use of renewable energies in our country. A necessary debate that aims to bring us closer to a socially and territorially just ecological turn, which is the goal pursued by the majority of those involved in it.
There are several important issues related to renewable energy, but I think they are secondary when it comes to explaining the current tensions: their local environmental impact (real and which should be minimized, but always less global than that of the climate crisis or the burning of fossil fuels). fuels), the dilemma of whether to prioritize ground or rooftop photovoltaics (consensus among experts is that due to the number and pace of installations required, both must be pushed in parallel) and the competition between renewable energy and agriculture. In the latter case, it should be noted that agriculture and energy are two systems that are equally artificial, essential and polluting (in Spain, agriculture generates more emissions than electricity production) that need to be decarbonized. However, if you take into account that photovoltaics will require barely 0.3-0.5% of agricultural land by 2030 (for comparison, 10% of agricultural land will be abandoned), that fallow land can be used, that there are mixed uses such as agrovoltaics, it can be stated that beyond concrete scandals there is no threat or real global competition between renewables and agriculture.
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In addition, there are three fundamental policy issues that I believe need to be further addressed.
territorial inequality
Spain exhibits a deep territorial disparity between electricity production and consumption, which reflects the centralized political model that causes it. Extremadura, which produces 423% of the energy consumed, and Madrid with 5% are cases so extreme that they border on the obscene, but we also have incidents like the Basque Country and Cantabria with 50% or the Region of Valencia with 69% . This inequality occurs not only between the Autonomous Communities, but also within each of them, the example of the differences between Tarragona and Girona within Catalonia being paradigmatic.
The ecological transition must correct these inequalities in the short term, taking into account the different uses of renewable resources (Madrid is less suitable for wind power than Cantabria, as well as Asturias less suitable for photovoltaics than Andalusia) and the fact that urban regions can hardly be energy self-sufficient, still for example at the food level.
However, since only 20% of the energy we consume is electrical energy, all autonomous communities are net importers of energy at the energy level, and since only about 50% of the electricity we produce comes from renewable sources, no community currently has more renewable energy, than it will consume in a few decades, even allowing for significant reductions in energy consumption. This is in no way an excuse to perpetuate these territorial inequalities, but rather shows that the inequality in what has been installed so far can be corrected.
Another source of conflict is that the energy transition is taking place in an oligopolistic context, whose profit-seeking has been left mostly in black and white in the last few months of the energy crisis, plus the sudden landing of investment funds with a heavy speculative component. Logically, this breeds resentment, while some gather extraordinary benefits while others only see all sorts of costs and changes in their way of life.
It is of no consolation to anyone to point out that oligopolies and extraordinary profits are not exclusive to the renewable sector, not even the power sector, but in the fossil fuel sectors responsible for the climate crisis (which are also actively working against the green transition ). . But it contextualizes the tragic dimension of the debate in this sense: if renewable energy is introduced, one oligopoly wins, and if not, the other wins.
We need to reform the electricity market, democratize its structure and encourage greater public and citizen participation in electricity generation and distribution. But since we’re late, there’s no leeway to stop renewable energy installation until we get there. We have to do it at the same time. The refusal to accept this uncomfortable reality hides the plight of the climate crisis.
Along with these two debates, I believe that the central crux of the problem stems from the sense of grievance that many regions and areas in Spain rightly feel. Long abandoned territories suffering a process of depopulation and emptying that in recent years has been able to articulate itself politically, both in the form of platforms and parties and above all under the idea and affection of “emptied Spain”. “.
The reality is that renewable energy adoption has played a very minor role in this process compared to other vectors, but we risk seeing it as the camel’s last straw. Moreover, it is fair to say that while renewables have done little to encourage depletion, the reality is they will not reverse it without a favorable institutional context. The jobs they generate are scarce in the medium term and the jobs they create during construction are often specialized jobs sourced from other locations.
In this context of task and historical grievance, the deployment of renewable energies presupposes rain on wet ground, met with resistance that, as in any conflict, is fraught with a series of good and bad reasons. Resistance that generally does not arise from egoism or the caricatured “refusal to progress”, but from very legitimate doubts about the ecological and social effects and, in many regions, from distrust of similar processes with disappointing results in which they mix interests with different degrees of legitimacy , especially when the conflict is contextualized in the global dimension of climate justice. Of course, the same thing happens to those of us who are committed to expanding renewable energies as quickly and fairly as possible. We don’t want to destroy the landscape, nor do we want to impose it “from Madrid”, but sometimes the scale and urgency of the global climate crisis can lead us to underestimate certain local environmental and social impacts.
This type of conflict will become more prevalent as ecological transition progresses and more sectors and activities are decarbonized in a context of great inequality and skepticism inherited from decades of neoliberalism. Listen to the conflicts, take care of their reasons and discuss an agreed solution together. This taking into account the framework of the local and global consequences, both of the introduction of renewable energies and of not tackling the climate crisis in time. This is the task facing territorial platforms, environmental activists, politicians and the whole of Spanish society.
In my opinion, solving the conflict with renewables involves developing a new social and territorial contract that makes it possible to make the eco-transition in general and the energy transition in particular fair: distributing impacts, costs and benefits fairly. I propose that this new contract, in its energy dimension, be based on three pillars:
In the first place we must bet on the respectful implementation of renewable plants: speeding up procedures in small and medium-sized plants that have good environmental practices, but inspecting large renewable complexes in more detail to allow rapid rejection processes for clearly unsustainable projects. Create authoritative maps of priority areas for renewable energy installation, maximum habitable area in a community and increase the administrative capacity at all territorial levels (local, regional and state), which has been decimated by austerity policies for years.
participation of residents
It is particularly important to institutionalize the involvement of the residents of the territories in the use of renewables through information, participation and mediation, so that they do not have the feeling that aggression is being carried out behind their backs. Make no mistake: trying to achieve shortcuts along these lines will only slow down projects, whether through the courts or through civil disobedience. Finally, the installation of urban renewable energy must be encouraged and accelerated because it is efficient, because it democratizes energy, and because it is not only fair, but symbolically necessary to drive the transition forward.
On the other hand, direct and indirect mechanisms must be created to ensure that the use of renewable energies has a positive impact in the areas.
One possibility is an electricity market reform that contains criteria that make the electricity tariff cheaper in the areas mentioned, for example by lowering the toll and fixed charges the higher the proportion of renewable electricity installed in the area, or through local flexibility markets. This indirect income mechanism has the advantage of being agile and immediately noticed by the beneficiaries, but the disadvantage is that it is a market correction tool which in itself does not guarantee that these compensations translate into better local development.
Another alternative, not necessarily opposite but complementary to the previous one, is to set up a state renewable energy fund, similar to that in Norway for oil, consisting of taxes on oligopoly companies, licenses and concessions for renewable energy or green hydrogen production and whose direct investment and dividends are channeled into services, local infrastructure and projects, preferably through a regional development and ecological transition agency similar to that operating in the Scottish Highlands (and which is a European reference in the fight against depopulation). be guided by the perspective of an ambitious ecological change linked to the territory.
Ecological transition is an ecological and moral imperative necessary if we are to continue to inhabit a planet that we have been pushing beyond its limits for some time. But it is not and will not be a conflict-free process. Above all, it is a political dispute about the distribution of benefits and incidental costs of the fight against the climate crisis. Let us use them to rebuild national and international social contracts that enable us to live better on a planet that is as warm as possible.
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