To curb speculation, the government has approved an 18-month moratorium affecting thousands of renewable energies. For the next year and a half, the administrator remained solely from the system operator (Red Eléctrica de España, now called redea). The measure does not affect parks that were blocked by Consell up to a month ago and that should have an environmental response before 25 January as they already have ports, but it does affect projects that are still in their infancy. The system operator processes 15,688 megawatts in the Community of Valencia, compared to the 10,000 megawatts Consell tracks. Valencia renewable energy employers support the moratorium.
The executive reacted after finding that speculation around photovoltaic and wind projects had skyrocketed in recent weeks, and approved the moratorium on royal decree 20/2022, published in the BOE in the last week of December. In the decree, the government explains that “there are approximately 290 transmission grid nodes reserved for access auctions … and are in the final processing stages” to provide orderly access to renewable generation and storage. Although the order has not been approved yet, in the drafts submitted to the hearing, the projects that put the facilities into service as soon as possible were expected to receive positive ratings.
The government’s text states that “the prospects created by the said resolution mean that speculative moves have been observed by some intermediaries who have taken the first steps in their (projects’) procedures, without continuing to block sites to other developers who are genuinely interested in developing renewable projects. The decree states that this situation has been “submitted in recent months”. It is also added that the demands for the initiation of guarantee and administrative permit procedures and the increase in the document demands within the scope of the environment.
The executive warns in the royal decree: “These previous moves are detrimental to the agencies, the population in the plant location, and the Administration that are genuinely interested in building renewable generation facilities. For agents (developers), because sites with high renewable resources are blocked by firms that are not interested in building projects. Procedures are initiated for the community in which the project is located, because for a number of projects that neither the network nor the site can absorb socially and environmentally. In addition, it is an avalanche of lawsuits already pending for the Administration, as it “assumes an inefficient use of resources in projects that may not be suitable”.