Emissions fell by 5.8% in Spain in 2019 (and will fall more due to the coronavirus)

Greenhouse gas emissions decreased in 2019 in Spain by 5.8% compared to the previous year. If the reductions already recorded in 2018 are taken into account, the result is that Spain’s gas inventory is close to 1990 levels. And why these declines?

The lower use of coal in thermal plants, largely replaced by natural gas (which entails less CO2 emissions), and the solidity of renewables are two keys to the evolution registered last year.

Emissions are already down 28.8% compared to 2005, the peak.

“The crisis unleashed by the coronavirus will predictably mean an even more spectacular fall in 2020,” says expert José Santamarta, who has prepared the study for the Sustainability Observatory.

In 1990, gas emissions reached a total of 289.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in Spain; peaked at 442 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2005 and last year fell to 314.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent according to the data provided in this study.

The bulk of greenhouse gases come from the electricity production and transport sector. This includes the ten oil refineries, energy consumption of the industry, inland air transport, residential uses (especially heating and domestic hot water) and services.

The bulk of emissions come from the electricity production and transport sector

Another block is industrial processes other than combustion, such as cement production, chemical and metallurgical industry, represented 9.8% in 2019.

Agriculture and livestock account for 14.2% of total carbon dioxide (_CO2) equivalent emissions.

And waste accounts for 4.9% of total carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions.

Evolution, more gas

In 2019, natural gas grew dramatically, by 14.6%, due to its greater use (81.6%) in electricity generation to replace coal.

In the road transport sector, emissions grew by 0.6% in 2019 and by 3.5% in inland air transport.

Despite everything, Spain remains one of the industrialized countries where emissions have increased the most since 1990 and still needs a significant effort to achieve the reduction targets by 2030.

In the road transport sector, emissions have grown by 0.6% in 2019

“Public policies and aid programs to encourage efficiency, electric vehicles and energy savings in transport, building and the service sector have not so far had a sufficient dimension so that the reduction in emissions can be significantly appreciated in the diffuse sectors,” says the report.

Causes of last year’s decline

The reduction in emissions in 2019 compared to the previous year can be attributed to the decrease in the burning of coal for electricity generation (69.4%), partly offset by the increase in natural gas consumption in combined cycle plants (+93.7).

In parallel, it was possible to compensate for the decrease in hydraulic production (-27.6%), since wind grew by 8.4%, photovoltaic by 19.6% and solar thermal by 16.8%.

A key factor has been a decrease in coal burning for electricity generation (69.4%)

In any case, the determining factor was the lower generation with coal in the thermal plants, due in large part to the high prices of emission rights.

The result of this price increase has led to a significant decrease in coal in electricity generation.

The other part of the explanation corresponds to the greater presence of renewable energies (such as wind, photovoltaic and solar thermal), whose greater penetration helps to understand the caliber of change. Wind alone avoided the emission in 2019 of 28 million tons of _CO2 equivalent.

The presence of renewables “was stopped by the governments of Rajoy’s PP” but then reactivated

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were important changes in the Spanish electricity mix, such as the high level of penetration of renewable technologies and the replacement of coal by natural gas. The presence of renewables “was stopped by the governments of Rajoy’s PP”, although later it had to rectify, the report indicates.

Reasons? “The notable decrease in the costs of photovoltaic and wind technologies as well as the need to meet European targets” on renewables explain this shift.

The result is that the PP government had to call auctions to allocate new renewable power (9,000 MW).

And more recently the new government (PSOE-Podemos) has begun to unblock projects with self-consumption and has announced an integrated national energy and climate plan (PNIEC) with a significant deployment of renewable energies that is expected to transform and decarbonize our electricity generation mix by 2030.

Distribution between emissions trading and diffuse sectors

Emissions from sectors subject to European emissions trading (ETS), such as electricity, cement, steel and others, represent 36.4% of the total in Spain.

On the other hand, the rest of the diffuse areas or sectors (building, transport, waste …) represented 61% of total emissions according to preliminary data.

Spain’s European targets for 2030 are, in the absence of the Government setting more ambitious targets, a reduction of 26% for diffuse sectors and 43% for sectors regulated by emissions trading compared to 2005.

Greenhouse gas emissions in Spain would have to be reduced by a third to meet the target set out in the draft Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition by 2030.

However, the report points out that “with the trends observed since 1990, it seems difficult to meet the very ambitious objectives set by the Government to continue reducing emissions in 2030. In this sense, it is pointed out that the ideal would be to continue the trend registered in 2019, and maintain it, with an approximate reduction of 7%.

This objective can be helped by the foreseeable immediate end of coal (which could soon disappear from the electricity pool).

In addition, it is pointed out that the enormous slowdown in the world economy caused by coronavius, also in Spain, “can have profound consequences on emissions for the year.”

The report makes some notable recommendations:

• Increase the weight of thermoelectric energy and pumping hydraulics, to take advantage of its manageability with respect to other sources of renewables especially intermittent such as wind, but also solar.
• Implementation of 1 million solar roofs with both photovoltaic and hot water and cooling. It is alleged that in Germany there are 1.4 million solar roofs, in Great Britain 0.8 million, in Italy 0.6 million and in Spain only 10,000. “The repeal of the sun tax is not enough,” says the report, which advocates introducing the net balance without limitations in self-consumption facilities, promoting photovoltaics in the industrial sector (polygons, sectors …) and on municipal rooftops or public use, and facilitating distributed energy.
• “The space left by coal for electricity generation cannot be allowed to be occupied mostly by natural gas,” adds other recommendations.
• “Accompany the energy transition with a planned and active industrial policy that guides investments towards new energy and renewable businesses designed in the emptied Spain and redirects a part of the industrial activity to the territories affected by closures of facilities derived from the transition”.
• Energy tax reform, through the creation of a tax on CO2 (already existing in other European countries) and on air pollutants that increases the taxation of hydrocarbons and reorders that of the electricity sector, so that fossil fuels and nuclear energy are taxed.
• Change in the electricity market that assigns price signals to energy. “The electricity market needs a substantial modification of the current marginalist model of pricing, based on the real costs of generation or the marginal cost but for each of the electricity technologies.”
• This requires an updated audit of all the costs of the electricity system, especially those derived from storage (electrical and thermal) highly sensitive in the coming years when renewable penetrations above 60% are exceeded and that require new challenges in manageability.
• Search for solutions and implementation of less polluting technologies to decarbonize industrial sectors of very difficult action, such as refineries, cement companies… Energy-intensive industrial processes such as the production of clinker, petrochemical and metallurgical, accounted for 9.8% of emissions in 2019.
• Energy rehabilitation of the housing stock with aid for the most vulnerable, especially in cities where the greatest increases in temperatures are being observed and where more aid for air conditioning will be necessary.
• Determined support for the electric car and charging points supported by self-consumption.
• Greenhouse gas inventory and decarbonisation strategy for each city
• Decarbonization strategy for each and every one of the diffuse sectors.
• Control and reduction of intensive livestock farming in macrofarms “a great generator of greenhouse gas emissions, especially methane”. Agriculture and livestock emit 14.2% of total emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent.
• Shock plan regarding the transport of goods. Currently 92% of goods are transported in Spain through the roads and no movement is observed for the goods to be moved by rail; nor is there decisive progress in the application of biofuels: biogas, hydrogenated oils…

Source: The Vanguard