Four communities lose at least fifty renewable parks due to lack of processing

Dozens of projects to build wind and photovoltaic parks in Spain were up in the air at dawn from Wednesday to Thursday after losing the access point to the energy transport network to which they were entitled.

The reason is the end of the term that the Ministry for Ecological Transition imposed for them to obtain the necessary environmental impact statement (DIA) before the end of January 25.

In a kind of race against time, Teresa Ribera's department claims to have closed the two hundred files that were pending.

This compliance has not been possible in the case of basically four autonomous communities: Galicia, Catalonia, Murcia and the Balearic Islands.

In them, 50 wind farms have been left out of administrative processing.

This Thursday, the vast majority of regional governments were able to puff their chests for having arrived on time to carry out the files that were on the tables of their technicians.

Galicia has been the most non-compliant, with 20 projects that have not received a response from the Xunta, neither affirmative nor negative.

They are followed by Catalonia, with 17 parks pending response, Murcia (11) and the Balearic Islands (the Administration suspects that there are two parks without environmental processing).

More information

Ecologists and technicians warn of a wave of complaints for exempting renewable energy projects from environmental evaluation

The definitive figures on the installed power that has passed the sieve of the administrations and of those that have lost their connection point due to lack of processing will not be known until the next few weeks, when their processing takes on an official look when going through the Official Gazette of the State (BOE) or by its regional equivalents.

"It is not yet possible to know exactly what percentage of them have not received a response from the Administration: weeks will still have to pass," complains Juan Virgilio Márquez, head of the AEE wind energy employers' association.

The organization of the promoters of photovoltaic parks does not have definitive data and, in the specific case of wind power, at the end of yesterday 12 gigawatts of wind power that were at risk had been resolved, according to the association of wind power companies.

Of these, more than three quarters have received a positive environmental impact statement.

Another seven gigawatts, however, are "at risk", in the words of Márquez.

The reason for this lag is twofold: on the one hand, the date of obtaining the environmental impact statement is not exactly the date of publication, but a week or more usually passes from when it is obtained until it is published in the official gazettes ;

on the other, some autonomies "may choose to grant some environmental impact statements because they only lack the final paper."

The bureaucratic rush in recent weeks has greatly reduced that logjam: a month ago, at Christmas, the seven gigawatts currently stuck were more than 11 GW.

"It has gone very quickly, which should also lead us to reflect on whether everything could not have been speeded up before," says Márquez on the other end of the phone.

In the association that he commands, PREPA, two people have spent months devoting most of their working day to combing the official bulletins in search of resolutions for renewable projects.

“A system is needed that gives visibility to all potential investors on how the procedures are going.

If not, they will perceive it as a risk when investing in Spain ”, he closes.

Litigation risk

The promoters who have not received the DIA on time have lost the connection rights to the grid that they had obtained from 2018 and the 40 euros per megawatt (MW) of power that they wanted and that they had to invest as a guarantee to continue in the administrative process.

By depending on the Administration, now the possibility of initiating legal claims for patrimonial responsibility for the money that they could have generated if their parks had entered into operation and litigation is open to them so that, at least, they do not lose the guarantees they made when they got their point of access.

And for the hundreds of companies that have successfully made it past the July 25 date, their administrative odyssey and the red lines marked on the calendar are not over yet.

To continue with their parks, they will have to wait for the responsible administrations to approve the prior administrative authorization on April 25 (the so-called milestone 3) and on July 25 the construction permit (milestone 4), the last one before starting the works and to be able to start up the park when these have been completed.

The arreón in the processing of wind farms so that they do not lose their rights to connect to the electricity grid has left out 20 files in Galicia that add up to 417 megawatts.

The Galician government, of the PP, however, introduced regulatory changes in the law accompanying the regional budgets this year that benefit these projects whose environmental impact statements have not been approved on time.

Its promoters, for example, will be able to continue the paperwork in the regional offices, although they will not obtain final authorization until they obtain a new access permit.

The affected companies will not lose their guarantees either because, the Xunta argues, the delay is "through no fault of the promoter", due to the "material impossibility of meeting the deadlines".

After reinforcing the workforce with 120 people who worked weekends, Christmas and until "12 midnight of any day", according to the Minister of the Environment, Ángeles Vázquez, the Galician Government has managed to carry out another 120 declarations of environmental impact, 77 of them favorable and that provide for the installation of 2,200 megawatts.

In Catalonia, the work has also been enormous, but despite this, 17 parks (three wind farms and 14 photovoltaic) that had an installed power of 542 megawatts have not been able to complete the process.

Currently, the autonomous community has an installed power of about 1,550 megawatts between wind and solar.

In recent months, the Generalitat has given 75 favorable DIAs, with a power of 1,739 MW.

Among them, it has validated a park in the Empordà, the first electricity generation facility in the province of Girona.

The Valencian Generalitat has analyzed a total of 107 files subject to the objective for this January 25, all of which expired.

More than 50% have passed this processing phase as 61 were favorably informed, of which 56 are photovoltaic plants and five are wind farms.

Of the remaining 46, 31 have obtained an unfavorable evaluation and 15 have not prospered due to withdrawal from the companies.

These projects will produce 1,356 megawatts.

The Andalusian Government assured yesterday that it had complied with all the fifty thousand projects it had on the table, with a power of 16,200 megawatts.

With information from

(Valencia),

(Palma),

(Barcelona),

(Madrid),

(A Coruña)

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber