In this journey on different possible futures we wanted to focus on a desirable one: a decarbonized world thanks to renewable energies, green hydrogen or the circular economy ”. This is how Jaime García Cantero, director of Retina, presents the event Decarbonisation: a future without emissions, a project by Retina and Banco Santander that is part of the Retina Futuros Posibles series. “If we talk about decarbonisation, there is no cleaner raw material than the one you don’t have to manufacture”, Tercia Amaia Rodríguez, CEO (CEO) and co-founder of Gravity Wave, a “social project that has the purpose of cleaning the Mediterranean of plastic and turn that waste into valuable products ”, as he describes it, thus embracing the circular economy model.
The European Commission says in its new action plan for the circular economy that half of the total emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and more than 90% of the loss of biodiversity and water stress are due to extraction and transformation of resources. And that “expanding the scale of the circular economy will make a decisive contribution to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and decoupling economic growth from the use of resources.” Rodríguez advocates for better waste management. “In Spain very little plastic is recycled,” he laments. And for “making it easy.” Businesses, for example, have to see the economic benefits of reducing their carbon footprint and reusing the resources they consume. Gravity Wave pays traditional fishermen for the plastic they collect. “We started with less than 50, now there are more than 1,000,” he recalls. The idea is to replicate the project in Greece.
If less than a decade ago the only argument of the defenders of renewable energies was the ecological one, today there is another, and very powerful addition: the economic one, as seen by Jorge Morales, director of Próxima Energía. “People install solar panels because they are aware and want to be energy independent, but, above all, because it is profitable,” he details. Morales assures that the energy of the future will be 100% cleaner and 100% cheaper. “Which does not mean that we are going to pay cheaper,” he adds. “The cost of producing electricity has nothing to do with the price that consumers pay for it; we are seeing plenty of examples in Spain during 2021 ″, he added.
A battle of all
The debate is now on whether this energy model of the future will be more or less cooperative, or, in other words, “if it will be in the hands of a few or more widespread, with many more people co-owning the new system,” Morales says. How the balance is resolved, which he recognizes as difficult, between the climatic urgency that forces to accelerate the energy transition and seems to push towards large installations, and the benefits of a distributed or decentralized generation, which would cover the demand but would need more time, will to depend, in his opinion, not only on who owns the property but also “the price that consumers will have to pay for electricity,” he warns. The property, which implies that there is more or less competition, is in his opinion the key element that will make the reduction in generation costs be reflected in the invoice.
“It doesn’t seem bad to me, I even see it healthy, that whoever succeeds with a renewable patent gets a high profit, for example, with a patent on a solar tracker…, as long as those solar trackers that are sold all over the world are serving so that in the countries where that energy is produced, the price of electricity is getting cheaper ”, Morales reflects. On the contrary, “if we have businessmen who obtain benefits in the image and likeness of those they had in the oligopolies from which we come, from plants that are amortized, such as the hydroelectric plants built during the dictatorship, in unreplicable conditions, whose production cost is very high. low, but they are charging the price as if they were the most expensive in the system…, I do believe that it is not legal, ”he opposes. It considers that the regulator has a responsibility to prevent these situations from occurring.
Efficiency versus cost
The draft of the Self-consumption Roadmap made public by the Government deploys a series of measures to reach 9 gigawatts (GW) installed for self-consumption in Spain, which could reach up to 14 GW “in the case of a very favorable scenario high penetration ”. Morales is clear that, with current technology, the energy system could be 100% renewable already today. “But at what price?” “It is technically feasible but economically very expensive,” he differs. Not in all cases. “The cost of solar photovoltaic has dropped by 90% in 10 years,” he says. But it is necessary to continue polishing the issue of batteries, or green hydrogen.
María Retuerto, a researcher at the CSIC’s Institute of Catalysis and Petroleochemistry, works to “increase efficiency and reduce the cost of the materials needed for the production of green hydrogen by electrolysis [rompiendo una molécula de agua mediante electricidad renovable], which are critical ”, according to comments at this Retina and Banco Santander event. It is a good way to store the surplus of renewable energy, which is transformed into green hydrogen to reach those sectors and activities that cannot be electrified. By 2030, this energy vector “must become an intrinsic part of an integrated energy system with the strategic objective of installing at least 40 GW of electrolyzers and the production of up to 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen in the European Union”, reveals the Hydrogen Roadmap of the Spanish Government.
“Its potential is enormous,” emphasizes Retuerto. “It can be applied to industry, for the production of fertilizers or ammonia, steel, iron, biofuels … Or injected into the natural gas network, since it only generates water when burned (it can also be methanized and incorporated into the network of gas). And accumulate in hydrogen batteries for transport ”, lists the scientist, who underlines its importance in decarbonization. “When we hear so much about green hydrogen, but it takes time to arrive, we can fall into skepticism,” García Cantero works as a devil’s advocate. To which Retuerto responds: “There are already enough industrial projects that are betting on green hydrogen. We are running out of options, and I don’t know if we are really aware that we have to make a change, as a society, to stop destroying the planet. The stakes of science are long-term, but we need urgent measures, quick action. And start now ”.
Talent and innovation, keys to the future
“Without investment in talent and technology there is no innovation, and without innovation there is no future, industrial or of any other kind”, Joaquín Abril-Martorell, Cepsa’s chief digital officer, concatenates concepts in the first talk of the session. “The next bet is that of knowledge; we have to push the talent that makes transformation possible; make Europe a leader in sustainability; generate a positive impact through innovation ”, details Tommaso Canonici, founding partner and CEO of the global innovation consultancy Opinno, in the latter.
“We have been talking more than normal for the industry for a year, first because of the covid-19, and then because of the supply problems,” says Jaime García Cantero, director of Retina and driver of the day. “The industry is the tractor of other sectors. Countries with a powerful industrial development surf the crisis better ”, answers Abril-Martorell. “The labor multiplication effect of industrialization has a positive impact on society. Each job in the industry creates 2.2 jobs in other sectors “, endorses his words the UN. And he warns: “Small and medium-sized companies are the most critical in the early stages of industrialization and, in general, the biggest job creators. They constitute more than 90% of the companies of the whole world and represent between 50% and 60% of the employment ”.
“Like any other sector, it is vulnerable if it is not agile”, warns Miguel Álava, general director of Amazon Web Services Iberia, who maintains that it will only be able to adapt with innovation. And that for this you need digitization and technology. Data analytics, machine learning or artificial intelligence to be not only more productive, but more efficient, competitive and sustainable. With regard to the Cloud service that he represents, he categorically states that “the cloud can be white or blue, but, of course, it is greener.”
Abril-Martorell welcomes the economic injection of the EU Recovery Funds, the Next Generation, which will be used for innovation, digitization and sustainability of the industry, but insists that, to reach a successful conclusion, it is necessary to attract and retain the talent. And call for action. “We can’t wait for them to do it to us,” he added, citing Cepsa as an example, which has created its own university to train its employees. “The future will be digital and sustainable, or there will be no future. They are two faces of the same coin. But the one who mints that coin is talent ”, he points out.
Cepsa’s CDO agrees with Álava that the pandemic has acted as an accelerator, “but it is not the engine of the very rapid changes that are taking place,” says Abril-Martorell, who regrets that the Spanish industry has lost steam: ” While in Europe it has more or less maintained its weight, perhaps with a slight decrease, in Spain it has dropped to 15% of national GDP, moving away from the 20% estimated by the EU for 2020 “. He defends “a smart reindustrialization.” And technological. “Europe has lost the train of technology; Europeans are big consumers of technology, and that’s fine, because it allows us to accelerate, but we are not creators or autonomous, we depend on what others produce ”, he argues, advancing one of the burning issues for 2022: technological sovereignty and dependence compared to the United States and China. “Europe has to make an effort,” he urges.
“Europe cannot compete on costs; their only option comes from innovation, technology, added value and sustainability ”, tercia Canonici. “Innovation is not about big or small; Everybody can”. In his opinion, an innovative company, in the first place, finds out what is happening before the others and works in an ecosystem; two, it puts the customer (and not the product) at the center; Three, it’s agile, and lastly, it’s related to leadership and culture: innovation permeates everything.
Canonici is “very optimistic.” It highlights that Europe has bet on sustainability, and that it is a smart bet not only in terms of values, but also in business terms. “We are going to win this battle, which is the one of the future; the industry is adapting ”, he underlines, highlighting, in particular, the“ very dominant ”position that Spain can achieve within the renewables sector. It seems to the founding partner and CEO of Opinno that the concept of “positive impact” is key, and that “companies must be helped to understand that the metric should not only be economic, and that the positive impact must be achieved to all interested parties ”. In other words, innovation is not enough; it must be accompanied by commitment and impact.
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