The traditional understanding between the Xunta de Galicia and the energy employers’ associations has cracked with the processing of the community’s budgets for 2025. The requirements that the Galician Government is going to apply, especially to wind energy, have opened a fight in which business promoters accuse Alfonso Rueda’s team of even going against the Constitution and worsening the environment for investment. The points of friction are summarized in two: the regional administration requires that wind turbine parks that are 25 years old undergo repowering – that is, installing windmills that produce more energy per unit, so that the number of wind turbines in the mountains is reduced. – and also establishes that wind and hydraulic projects must sell at least half of their production to Galician citizens and businesses.
On Monday, the day before the regional Parliament approved, with only the votes of the PP, the budgets for 2025 and its accompanying law, which is the one that contains these new developments, a joint statement expressed the alignment of the Wind Business Association, the Association of Electrical Energy Companies and the Association of Renewable Energy Companies: “Measures such as those proposed [por la Xunta] “The inevitable consequence will be an increase in uncertainty and litigation in the sector.” All of this, they add, will cause a slowdown that will be “detrimental” to Galicia and Spain. The president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, responded with the warning that the employers must look beyond the benefits: “Apart from thinking about the income statement, you also have to think about the territories.”
The disagreement had begun with the presentation of the draft budget for 2025 in October. The Minister of Economy and Industry, María Jesús Lorenzana, said that the Xunta’s plans foresee that in the next five years there will be 100 parks, with about 3,000 wind turbines in total, which will turn 25 years old and will have to be repowered. And that, within a period of eight years, there will be around 600 mills, a reduction of 80%. The Wind Business Association (AEE) described the formula as “erroneous and harmful to the interests of companies, society, the economy and the image of the country.” “It collides head-on with the fundamental principles of the existing legal system,” he emphasized.
Already in November, Lorenzana appeared in Parliament to ensure that developers will be required to sell at least half of the energy to local consumers. This would be done with long-term power sales agreements (PPA), which offer lower prices, and will also affect new hydraulic concessions. The Wind Business Association considered it a “de facto expropriation.”
The disagreement between the Xunta and the energy employers’ associations was interpreted by the opposition leader, Ana Pontón, as something else: “An agreed campaign to continue deceiving citizens.” The position of the Galician Government, he reasoned, is actually to “accelerate the depredation process” with other points included in the accompanying law, such as allowing suspended wind farms to be reprocessed. The recurring changes in wind regulations through the accompanying law also received criticism from the PSdeG. Representative Patricia Iglesias spoke of “Frankenstein wind policy.”
“Competitive distortion” and first announcements of repowering
After the joint statement on Monday, Rueda assured that his Government’s position is that the resources generated in Galicia must have benefits for Galician companies and citizens, especially for those who live in the territories where the exploitations are installed. . It is the idea that the Xunta defends that is behind the public-private marketing company announced last September. He said this in reference to the employers’ associations’ criticism that “the processing of wind and hydroelectric projects will be facilitated if a certain proportion of the energy is sold to clients based in Galicia.” Regarding the other point of confrontation, that of repowering, the Galician president stressed the number of mills that could be eliminated: “Sometimes the proportion is that, where there are ten or twelve, they can be converted into one or two.” He trusts, he added, that the employers understand his position, for which he promises “firmness.” Last Thursday Naturgy – integrated into the Wind Business Association – announced, after a visit by Rueda to the Belesar hydroelectric plant, in Chantada (Lugo), an investment of 150 million euros to repower three wind farms.
The employers object that parks over 25 years old “operate with absolute guarantees” and that closing a facility in good condition “due to an administrative decision” is an “uneconomic decision and represents a serious distortion of competition in the market.” They also consider that it is a retroactive measure, so that “it conditions the authorization granted on the day it was granted.” They defend that operators should decide on repowering “freely”. They see the obligation for wind and hydraulic developers to sell part of their energy in Galicia as “contrary to the law”: “It represents a competitive distortion and fragmentation of the market.” And that, they add, “compromises the constitutional principles in Spain, in particular that of market unity and the single European market.”
The more than 60 stoppages in the courts
In the joint statement, the associations insist that the new measures are “an additional blow to the investment climate” in Galicia, with a wind farm affected by “great legal uncertainty due to the suspension of authorizations.” They refer to the already more than 60 projects that the Superior Court of Xustiza of Galicia (TSXG) has provisionally paralyzed due to possible irreparable environmental damage. In this, its position does converge with that of the Xunta. The criticized changes appear in the Law of Fiscal and Administrative Measures, known as the budget accompanying law, in which the Galician Government usually includes a string of modifications to different regulations – in the 2025 law, almost fifty laws – . One of the usual ones is wind power and, in this case, it introduces other new features that are more favorable to the sector, some of them through the amendments presented by the group that supports the Government, the PP: stopped wind farms can be processed again judicially in a simplified manner.
Both the sector and the Xunta have repeated in recent months that judicial decisions are causing paralysis in the sector and have put the focus on the judges. Experts such as the professor of Administrative Law at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) Alba Nogueira, however, point to the “little care” of the Galician Government in the environmental review and the associations that are presenting appeals against the authorizations also appreciate defects and deficiencies in environmental impact studies. The risk to fundamentally natural values is what is behind the current 62 suspensions. In addition, there is another aspect that affects permits and that is pending a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The Superior Court of Galicia asked him a triple preliminary question to determine whether the were approved.
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