Renta 4 | The bottlenecks continue in Spain: Red Eléctrica de España (REE) has 339.800 MW of renewables registered in December 2021 compared with 339.700 MW in November. The normal is an additional +2k on a monthly basis.
There are too many requests to build wind and photovoltaic farms in Spain. So the government is encouraging the withdrawal of the more problematical ones, those with fewer possibilities of getting through the environmental evaluation.
On January 23rd, the deadline established by the Real Decreto-Ley 29/2021 came to an end. This was for those promoters who agree not to go ahead with a project already presented to be able to recover, in exchange, the economic guarantees requested at the start of the process ie 40.00 eur/MW.
To offset the slowdown sparked by the avalanche of requests, in the same Real Decreto-Ley, approved at end-2021, the periods for the different steps in the process were extended. Particularly with regard to the evaluation of the environmental impact. This is where the main bottleneck to digest the renewables’ binge is to be found.
Paradoxically, despite being overwhelmed, the administrations need to complete the evaluation of each farm in order of when the request arrived. Even though they know in advance that one has few possibilites of going ahead.
Valuation: Spain’s renewables target for 2030 is to build an additional 60.000 MW. However, as of now there are requests presented to connect some 150.000 MW to the network, the majority for wind and photovoltaic.
This avalanche does not only far exceed the country’s needs, but it has caused a huge gridlock in the administrations. A plug which is complicating an adequate environmental evaluation of the projects as a whole and lengthening the periods for the processes. This puts at risk meeting the required deadlines so that other perfectly viable farms can be approved.
Negative.
