Renewable energy sources warn hundreds of projects in danger in Spain due to Administration squeeze

Despite successive measures by the government to curb speculation and burst a feared bubble in the industry, demands for new renewable utilities to be connected to the electricity grid are almost triple all this new power According to data collected by El Periódico de España, it is planned by the Government in the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) for the next ten years.

Red Eléctrica, the manager of the high voltage grid and operator of the electricity system, has already granted grid access to 145,200 MW projects and is currently working on a 22,600 MW project in addition to 43,500 MW of wind power. Photovoltaic is already working according to the latest data from the end of last February.

Serious projects or not

It is accepted from the renewable energy sector that, There is no real project behind most of these requests. and that the organizers will withdraw the request or be rejected by the administrations. However, the concern among green energy companies stems from hundreds of ongoing projects with energy projects behind them. Risk of failure due to accumulated delay by administrations – both the central government and above all the autonomous communities – to carry out interim authorizations.

“As the fulfillment of our country’s climate goals, economic recovery and energy security depend on it, Administrations must accelerate processes as much as possible. We can’t afford to miss a single thing wind project It can be commissioned within the next two years,” explains Juan Virgilio Márquez, managing director of the Wind Energy Cooperation (AEE).

At the end of December, the Government excessively approved a nine-month extension of deadlines for renewables to obtain some interim permits (environmental impact statement and preliminary administrative permit), which has prevented hundreds of projects from falling into decline. administrations delay and beneficiaries may lose the guarantees offered to obtain licenses and access permissions to the network. With the new deadlines, most projects should have obtained these permits by the end of this year or very early 2023..

management collapse

But the administrative bottleneck remains, and companies fear that while they assume the extension will fall short, they fear it will. The government is not in the business of issuing new postponements. The avalanche of renewable projects continues, crashing the Authorities responsible for issuing permits and causing major delays in processing (Ministry of Ecological Transition for large projects over 50 MW and autonomous projects). communities for lower power plants). The delays threaten to export projects that have an actual construction plan for failing to comply with statutory deadlines for obtaining interim permits.

“We will see in the coming months whether Administrations can accelerate the processing speed. Some apps don’t have a serious project behind them, but the problem is for those who have a real project and can be left out. If these projects don’t receive authorizations by the end of the year, they lose port rights to the network and go back to the start box. there is too much uncertainty”, says José Donoso, managing director of the Spanish Photovoltaic Association (UNEF).

According to data from photovoltaic employers, they expected to receive construction permits and environmental impact statements (DIA) from different administrations for their 59,678 MW solar and 26,783 MW wind power projects last January. Well, a total of 86,461 renewable MWs still waiting to receive administrative permits in the coming months be able to continue processing projects, compared to 19,016 MW that activated the procedure and already received a construction permit or DIA.

lack of resources

In order to encourage genuinely viable renewable projects and to export only speculative ones, the Government has obligated developers to meet intermediate milestones and obtain permits within a maximum of five years from obtaining the network access permit. Many projects were about to miss these deadlines and in many cases this was due to a delay in processing by the Administrations. To save these projects, the Ministry of Ecological Transition opened its hand and The fulfillment of several of these milestones has been delayed to January 2023. However, there is a risk that the processes will not be blocked and the problem will recur in the coming months.

The central government did. disappointment due to lack of staff to open the renewable energy demand threshold by different Administrations, especially regional ones. Autonomous communities acknowledged that they could not handle the avalanche of requests received, and it was the regional governments that unanimously requested the Government to extend the terms of the interim permits.