Thursday, March 30, 2023
The “unstoppable” nature of the energy transition and its value as a generator of stable and quality employment was made clear yesterday during the round table ‘Dynamization of the sustainable economy in the Region’, led by the Councilor for Finance, Contracting and Economic Promotion of the Molina de Segura Town Hall, José de Haro; the president of Fremm, Alfonso Hernández; the representative of Ucomur, Miguel Ángel Mena, and the president of the Business Association of Renewable Energies and Energy Savings of Murcia (Aremur), Francisco Espín.
The participants in the meeting unanimously agreed on the need to promote a green transition whose raison d’être is renewable energies, “which already provide more than 90,000 jobs in Spain and contribute more than 12,000 million in income”, recalled José de Haro. The councilor did not want to miss the opportunity to highlight the role played by Molina de Segura, by having such important companies in the sector as Soltec in its territory, and emphasized some measures that have been carried out, such as the implementation of photovoltaics in buildings public, the promotion of electric mobility and the implementation of free public transport. On the other hand, he highlighted the “active role” of municipal administrations in the creation of “solar farms”, since their location is subject to the general urban planning plans, which must decide where they are located without this posing a problem for the environment or the population. “Urban planning is more important than it may seem,” he remarked, while asking that these decisions have a supra-municipal nature, “in order to manage well something as strategic as energy.”
Planning was also one of the aspects that Alfonso Hernández wanted to emphasize. The president of the Fremm opined that the European Union intends to achieve “some milestones that are too great. We almost have to triple the installed power in the Region », he summed up. In order to reach the goal, the expert opted for good planning that aligns economic, environmental and social sustainability, while calling for more resources to train new professionals. “If the proper foundations are laid, we are convinced that the sector will react quickly and effectively.”
Appropriate legal framework
The photovoltaic solar plants depend for their putting into operation on a bureaucratic procedure that the experts consider necessary, but that they ask that it be simplified. In this line, Francisco Espín valued the regulations created as “a brutal advance and a facilitator”, but advocated “accelerating the processes. We have to go from the administration of the 20th century to that of the 21st century,” he said, while calling for the creation of a general directorate for energy transition, “in order to manage the European funds that are coming to us and provide resources to officials that they are overwhelmed.”
Finally, the president of Aremur stressed the need to “carry out all the controls that are necessary, because illegal situations generate unfair competition”, but criticized the fact that the size of the solar plant is not taken into account at the administrative level. “A 3 kW one is being asked for the same as a 100 kW one,” he added.
new actors
In this buoyant energetic environment, a new actor has appeared, gaining more and more importance and valued by Miguel Ángel Mena. Energy communities are legal entities, made up mostly of citizens or SMEs, who work to generate, use and manage their own energy. “They are a participatory and open legal figure where there is governance by all,” explained the expert, who valued them as “a figure that fits perfectly with cooperativism.”
In this line, he showed his support for “the existence of large facilities”, but stressed that they must be accompanied by “developments in which the citizen has a leading role”. Finally, he did not want to miss the opportunity to make visible “the barriers that we cooperatives that want to create energy communities encounter” and regretted that these drawbacks “are the same for large developments, but they have more resources to solve them.” For this reason, he opted for “simple and transparent procedures, because otherwise the slogan of the energy transition with people at the center is emptied of content.”
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