By Institute for Energy Research ——Bio and Archives--February 15, 2011
Global Warming-Energy-Environment | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
Annual data from Red Electrica, a major Spanish power transmission company, confirms the unstoppable rise of clean energies in Spain. In 2010, renewables supplied 35% of all Spain's electricity, higher than ever before, and even though overall power consumption was higher than 2009. Wind power alone supplied 16%, twice as much power as coal and on very windy days, wind power peaked at over half the national power consumption.I have debated Sr. Garcia on several occasions in the media, so I am not entirely surprised by the games played here. But the truth is available in the official data, at the regulator's webpagewww.cne.es, if difficult to find if you are not trained for it. (While I understand this is Spain, Greenpeace appears to know this but feels compelled to torture the data to confess to their faith.) The participation of the renewable energy sales in the total gross demand consumed in 2010 was 24% (15% wind, 2.62% solar, 5% small hydro, 1% biomass). What Sr. Garcia does not mention is the high cost of subsidizing these renewables. In 2009 alone, subsidies for renewables were 6.5 billion euros ($8.8 billion) in Spain--a county with a population less than 1/6th the size of the U.S. population. So wind and solar provide well under one-fifth of Spain's electricity. Now, Garcia's figure includes dams--which environmentalists oppose.(1) To get to their figure, Greenpeace--as the Red Electrica website makes perfectly clear--includes all hydroelectric production. What is most disturbing, and revealing, about such a tout is that Greenpeace is well known as an aggressive anti-hydroelectricity lobby. So, in order to dramatically overstate a claim of a category of something they want, they include large amounts of that which they despise. Just this month Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero admitted for the first time that Spain's solar industry just might be a bubble after all, with many resemblances to another recent bubble in housing.
View Comments
The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.