Spain sets high hopes on energy from wind and sun (Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen Jun 6, 2009, 2:08 GMT

Madrid - Driving around Spain, the traveller often sees sleek white turbines turning in the wind.

They stand as a visible sign of Spain's growing reliance on renewable energy, a sector which has seen a soaring development in the recent years.

Spain has been mentioned as a model to follow even by US President Barack Obama, whose administration is studying the Spanish experience.

It would not be unrealistic for Spain to aim at getting all its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, the environmental organization Greenpeace and the renewable energy producers' association APPA said in a recent report.

Others are more skeptical, and Greenpeace expert Jose Luis Garcia admits that it depends on public policies whether the green energy revolution will actually take place.

Spain's energy development is coming to a turning point, Garcia said in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

Alternative sources of energy are growing so rapidly that decision-makers will soon have to make a choice between them on the one hand, and nuclear and fossil energies on the other hand, Garcia explained.

Spain currently gets about 20 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, which employ some 200,000 people - a situation that not many people would have thought possible just a few decades ago.

Spain is the world's third leader in wind energy after the United States and Germany, with hundreds of wind parks contributing about 12 per cent of electricity in 2008.

Spain is also a pioneer in solar and biofuel energies, with photovoltaic solar energy growing sixfold in 2008, though it still contributes less than 1 per cent of electricity.

'Every year there is a technological leap forward, and the capacity for improvement... is immense,' Jeronimo Camacho of the national renewable energy centre Cener told the daily La Vanguardia.

Spain's progress is attributed to the early adoption of tariff and other incentives by the authorities, such as a guarantee to renewable energy producers that all their energy will be purchased.

Spanish companies also made early investments in core technologies in the field.

It was natural for an interest in renewable energy to emerge in a country which imports nearly 80 per cent of its oil and gas, Garcia points out.

Top Spanish companies specializing in renewables now do much of their business in other European countries, the United States and as far as China.

Acciona Energia and Abengoa, for instance, are building or planning some of the world's largest solar energy installations in the United States, while the wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa sold 65 per cent of its turbines outside Spain in 2008.

The interest in renewable energy has also increased because of Spain's ongoing economic crisis, which has prompted Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government to seek a 'new economic model' based on modern, innovative and sustainable sectors.

Nearly 75 per cent of Spanish companies see climate change as a business opportunity, according to a new government report.

The government is expected to table a new energy law which activists like Garcia want to be aimed at the substitution of traditional 'dirty' energies with 'clean' ones.

In 2008, premiums to encourage the use of renewable sources cost Spanish energy consumers more than 3.3 billion euros (4.6 billion dollars), according to a figure quoted by the daily El Pais.

Garcia rejects criticism that renewables are expensive, expressing confidence that the development of technology, know-how and economies of scale will allow for subsidies to be lifted later on.

Fossil energies were also developed with the help of subsidies, he points out. They continue to be subsidized, and carry the additional cost of the environmental damage they produce, the Greenpeace expert argues.

Critics of renewables also say they are weather-dependent and therefore unpredictable, but Garcia believes stable supplies can be guaranteed.

'Technologies and types of energy can be combined in ways to satisfy all energy needs,' he says. 'A solar energy plant, for instance, can use biomass as a back-up.'

For the green revolution to become reality, the authorities not only need to continue subsidizing renewable energy for now, but must also remove bureaucratic and other obstacles to its development, Greenpeace and APPA said in their proposal for a new energy law.

Electricity distribution networks are controlled by traditional power companies, which do not have an interest in facilitating the growth of energy from alternative sources, Garcia points out.

Not all are as optimistic as the Greenpeace activist.

'There are so many uncertainties from the technological and social point of view,' that it is too early to foresee the next decade, said Luis Atienza, president of the Spanish Electricity Network.