Spain raises 2030 renewables target

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From pv magazine Spain.

President Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday Spain’s Council of Ministers would today approve a ten-year package of energy and climate measures.

The head of state said the “three essential pillars” – the preliminary draft of the Climate Change Law, the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan 2021-2030 and the Fair Transition Strategy – would “allow Spain have a stable, predictable and accurate framework for the decarbonization of its economy by 2050”.

“The package includes a set of tools that set the path to build a better, more responsible, more sustainable, more competitive and better prepared Spain for major economic challenges, with a better quality of life and better health standards,” said President Sánchez. “The dilemma that we must choose between work and prosperity, on the one hand, and fight against [global] warming, on the other, is false.”

The president said Spain could be the first EU country without greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and added: “I insist on this point: Without emissions of greenhouse gases.”

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According to the new measures, renewable energy would be expected to supply 74% of Spain’s electricity by 2030 – accounting for 41% of total energy demand. The latter figure constitutes a 6% rise on the nation’s current ambition.

The package also calls for all electricity to come from renewables in 2050 and limits exploitation of hydrocarbons, as well as proposing a process of reviewing fossil fuel subsidies and progress in disinvesting the public sector from that industry.

The bill is “a modernization project for the Spanish economy that will mobilize more than €237 billion in public and private investment, and under mixed models of public-private collaboration,” Sánchez added. “The set of measures will generate around 300,000 new jobs between 2020 and 2030.”

Renewable energy investments would generate 99,000-172,000 jobs, according to official estimates, and energy efficiency funding would be responsible for 42,000-80,000 jobs.

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