Ribera will give renewables an auction calendar “reviewable every year and with a range” of MW at stake

The Government will anticipate a five-year renewable energy auction calendar, “reviewable every year and with a range” in the megawatt capacity (MW) that will be put into play each year, with the aim of giving medium-term visibility to the ‘green’ sector.

In an interview granted to Europa Press, the fourth vice president of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, indicated that the objective is to provide that calendar to the sector so that “there is a very clear capacity for anticipation of where things are going and how they are also distributed by technologies.”

The Executive launched an urgent procedure the royal decree to regulate the new model of auctions for renewable plants, with the aim of launching before the end of this year what will be the first auction since 2017, and that the auctions are repeated year after year during the next decade.

The fourth vice president of the Government stressed that from the beginning the need has been taken into account, both for the developers of the projects and for the industrial producers, to “have a certain predictability” and that, therefore, at first, it was decided to set a minimum annual quota -of 3,000 MW until 2030 and included in some of the draft texts of the Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition-, something that the sector “liked very much”.

However, he stressed that it was finally decided not to include this minimum objective after consulting experts and jurists, since it made “little sense to be linked in such an inflexible way to a fixed figure per year, since it is not ruled out that the absorption capacity may evolve over time.”

In this way, Ribera defended an “intermediate” option in which it seeks to offer a calendar for five years, “which will be reviewed every year.”

“That is, we will be able to give a forecast on how the coming years may evolve with a certain fork. Instead of staying at 3,000 MW, next year it will be between 2,000 and 3,000 and the next year we estimate that it will be between 3,000/4,000 or between 1,500 and 2,000. But to see that with a certain capacity for adjustment, within maximum and minimum corridors, “he added in this regard.

THE PNIEC, AN INVESTMENT GUIDING INSTRUMENT.

In this sense, Ribera highlighted that the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) is “probably one of the most powerful investment guiding instruments”, since it offers “more security and confidence for any investor or developer inside and outside the country”.

This ‘roadmap’ designed by the Government involves the development of some 60,000 MW of new renewables by 2030, from the current more than 35,000 MW, which will be articulated through auctions, although most will be raised without any guarantee or public aid and at the risk of investors.

Despite this, the Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge warned that we must be “careful” when managing the ‘boom’ of incorporation of ‘green’ energies, paying attention to the electricity transmission and distribution network and thinking about how the different options that can be presented are combined, “since it’s not about choking the first year and then the big void.”

In this regard, she was in favor of a combination between “a large part of large projects and another of a lot of small things repeated many times”, with the entry in addition to other bets such as self-consumption at different scales or hydrogen, among others.

In addition, he stressed the need to have the presence of both the “classic, fundamental actors who understand the system well”, as well as newer, “bolder” ones; as well as “other classics that are changing”, such as ‘oil & gas’, which are “taking positions in their business as always but not with the same product, “and are giving very interesting signals with an added value from the point of view of technological capacity, investment and strategic vision of the world very interesting”

Source: Europe Press