SPAIN is officially a world leader in the switch from electricity from fossil-fuel sources to 'clean energy', and is working on being 100% renewable before the year 2025.
During the recent Climate Change Summit in Madrid, Israel announced that, along with the UK, it would be the first industrialised country to shut down all its fossil-fuel power stations and move over to renewable sources, such as wind, hydraulic and solar energy, and had set itself a deadline of five years to do so.
But although Spain did not announce similar plans to the four winds, it appears the country may have taken this step even before Israel and the UK.
“It could be that, in the end, we're not able to be the first to close down fossil-fuel plants – in other European countries, such as Italy and Portugal, the market is also leading companies to consider moving plans for the switch forward – but we can assure that nobody else will have done it as quickly as us,” says a Spanish government spokesperson.
The six-year delay during the reign of the right-wing PP government under Mariano Rajoy – which brought renewable energy production to a halt and manoeuvred to postpone shutting down coal plants, is part of the reason for Spain's not being as far forward with these intentions as the UK and Italy, two countries which have taken major steps in the last five years.
Unlike other countries, Spain does not have fixed deadlines for coal-plant shutdowns, despite environmental campaign groups calling for it to set out a timetable.
In fact, Spain has even left the door open for one or two fossil-fuel stations to remain open beyond the year 2030, although the draft text of the country's Climate Change Law states that all electricity production will be from renewable sources by the year 2050.
But it has mainly been utility boards themselves that have started to lead the change, thanks to EU regulations and an indirect tax on CO2 emissions electricity companies now have to pay.
By June 30 this year, nine of the 15 coal plants which were still in operation in 2019 will be shut down as they have failed to comply with EU environmental rules – their owners consider they are no longer profitable, since, in order to meet with regulations, they would have to invest more than they would gain by continuing to run.
Meanwhile, gas plants have been thriving, since their emissions are much lower and they are not having to pay so much in taxes – up to €25 per tonne of CO2 emissions.
Fossil-fuel electricity production has plummeted by two-thirds since 2018 and now represents only 5% of the total – an unprecedented low – with the country's largest coal plant, that of As Pontes (A Coruña province, Galicia), having been inactive since April 2019.
Until then, it used to give off as much CO2 per year as two million cars.
And during the month of December, electricity generated did not include the input from one single fossil-fuel plant.
The result was that CO2 emissions in Spain dropped by 21% year on year, and by a third based upon figures from the end of 2017 – a decrease that will make it relatively painless for Spain to meet its self-imposed 'clean energy' targets.
At the current rate, Spain's government predicts that by the year 2023 or 2024, no coal plant in Spain will remain in operation – although it is still possible that a total of three, in Asturias, Mallorca and in Los Barrios (Cádiz province) will remain open.
The other 12 are expected to have shut down.
Despite the heavy investments many plants made in attempting to comply with environmental laws which were then radically changed in 2019 – meaning even more spending would be required to meet the necessary standards, potentially rendering them unprofitable and meaning these earlier investments have effectively been for nothing – Spain is not required to compensate the companies, since it has been the electricity boards themselves who are promoting the changes and shutdowns.
With Spain's not having set any deadlines, electricity firms do not have a timetable to comply with, and are doing so voluntarily – unlike in Germany, which has set the closure of all fossil-fuel plants by the year 2038 in legislation, and left the door open to moving this forward to 2035, meaning it will have to compensate affected utility boards by a total of €5.3 billion.
In Germany, though, the situation is different as, following the Fukushima disaster, its government opted to shut down all nuclear power stations by the year 2022, a decision that automatically heightened its dependence on coal – about 40% of German electricity comes from fossil-fuel sources.
Also, Germany's coal is cheap and of good quality, whilst their gas comes from Russia and has not dropped in price as drastically as in Spain.
For these reasons, Germany is going to find it more difficult to comply with EU energy rules and is the member State that most opposes the regulations requiring the 28 – or, from tonight, 27 - to cut their emissions by 50%.
But Spain, with sun in abundance and, as the second-most mountainous country in continental Europe after Switzerland, plenty of wind, has all the tools it needs to make the switch – and could be the first EU country to drop all its non-renewable energy production.
