The government and autonomous communities are running hundreds of projects for new renewable power plants. Green energy companies must adhere to strict leave deadlines to keep their projects alive and not lose their coveted success points. Connection to the electricity gridwhich would force them to return to the starting point of a long bureaucratic process that took about five years.
The Ministry of Ecological Transition and the branch’s regional departments have been involved in a real run to analyze the demands of hundreds of wind and solar projects in recent months before the 25th January, the deadline for the vast majority of requests. environmental impact statement (EIS).
It was just one of several bureaucratic stages that energy companies would have to go through before they could get the factories up and running. After receiving the environmental declaration, the vast majority of projects in the pipeline must receive it from central government (for projects over 50 megawatts (MW)) or autonomous communities (for smaller ones). Preliminary administrative permit before 25 April and administrative building permit before 25 July.
It is emphasized that obtaining these two administrative permits from the renewable energy sector in the next six months requires a much simpler process than that of DIA and that the Administration is not in danger of experiencing the tensions of recent months again. But wind and photovoltaic companies warn that major traffic jams will come later. And this is it The risk of collapse of the sector will be produced by the concentration of all the construction work of the factories.with firms objecting to the same suppliers, and with the requirement for facilities to be effectively operational before 25 June 2025.
avalanche in two years
The little transparency of some regional governments makes it currently impossible to know the total volume of green projects in progress. The industry’s calculations show that they achieved positive DIAs and Processing continues at facilities with shared power between 50,000 and 60,000 megawatts (MW). All these projects will need to be built no later than two years after the building permit is received in the middle of this year. A feat that the energy industry and the industry associated with it thought was not possible.
And to achieve this Build all new renewable energy planned by the government for this entire decade within two years It will have to actually increase the annual rate of construction recorded in the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) and the Spanish market in recent years fivefold. The sentence “It is absolutely impossible to meet these deadlines” José Donoso, managing director of the employers’ association Unión Española Fotovoltaica (UNEF), this gives voice to a general feeling in the national green industry.
Renewables sector warnsSaturation of supply chains for new facilities to be built in such a short time, also decreases with the characteristics of the whole process. It is noted that negotiations with banks have begun to obtain financing, which usually takes six months, after the green companies get the building permit next July.
and the process of obtaining Effective access to the transmission or distribution network It takes another six months, and it doesn’t come on until construction is complete, which will force companies to complete the works by the end of 2024 or very early in 2025 to arrive in time to put the plant up and running in June of that year. . “We are concerned about intensifying the building of all this new power in just two years. José María González Moya, managing director of the APPA Renovables business association, emphasizes that there will be problems in supply chains.
Not only to get the solar panels or wind turbines on time, but also to find companies to do the construction work, to transport the equipment, to find the cranes to install them, to ensure that there is enough labor… same services are being challenged. prepare your plants. And very specifically, green companies warn of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary current transformers (transformers) for their substations on time, and their delivery takes between 18 and 22 months.
“Postponing this deadline will be mandatory by bottlenecks. It would be appropriate to extend it,” says Donoso of UNEF. While industry associations acknowledge that they have not yet made a formal request to the Government and are waiting to find out how many projects are in progress after obtaining building permits to realize this, they assume that there will be legal changes. Need to give more time. “It makes sense to extend the time and what needs to be done in four years need not be done in two years. Final milestones need to be made more flexible”, APPA managing director agrees.
Measures against speculation
for promotional purposes only renewable projects In order to banish the truly viable and merely speculative, the government has imposed an obligation on entrepreneurs to meet intermediate milestones and obtain authorization gradually, within a maximum of five years from obtaining the network access permit.
Commanded by the Ministry of Ecological Transition Vice President Teresa Riberaissued an additional nine-month moratorium and some form of amnesty for a few of these milestones so that partners who withdrew their applications could reclaim the guarantees offered. However, he has so far insisted on refusing to extend the deadlines again.
“Few speculators will remain already in the last year and a half of the process. All that remains will be projects that are really about to be built,” said APPA’s Moya, arguing that the Government should make deadlines more flexible. “The problem isn’t just with the supporters. As a country, we all have problems.”