The Council of Government has approved, this Monday, the document of declaration of energy emergency in the Canary Islands. This declaration aims to show society and the Government of Spain what the critical situation of the electrical system in the Canary Islands is and to encourage the agility of the procedures and deadlines to open urgent actions and reverse this situation.
The document implies the explicit recognition of the critical situation in which the Canary Islands is located and marks to the State Government the "urgency" of materializing the emergency actions in the short term and penetration of renewables in the medium and long term.
The Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy, Mariano Zapata, explained, in the press conference after the celebration of the council, that "it is essential to transfer to reality and materialize all the agreements reached with the State in just 70 days of autonomous government, for the common good of the Canarians". Zapata specified that "although it is a matter of months before the ordinary contest is published, it is now urgent to apply the urgent measures, without neglecting the development of the capacity of implementation and penetration of renewables, to avoid another zero, more than probable, in the short term".
The declaration of energy emergency promotes the common and joint work of public administrations and political forces. Therefore, "some of the allegations of local corporations have been assumed" - Zapata said.
The approved text, includes in fourteen points, the path to follow to commit the policies and measures that are necessary to adopt by the different public administrations, in order to resolve in the first place, the "critical situation of the Canary Islands in electricity generation, in line with the development and implementation of renewables". It also responds to specify that the "procedure to apply the temporary measures necessary to ensure the electricity supply in the short term must be processed by the "emergency route". In this sense, it urges to promote urgently, and jointly with the State Government, the "necessary measures for the renovation" of the current manageable generation park, convening, as soon as possible, the competitive concurrence procedure.
The text marks the way forward to "achieve the long-awaited decarbonization in the long term", thus complying with the Sustainable Development Goals. Thus, it bases the need to install equipment that has the capacity of adaptation to, while ensuring the electricity supply, work on the "penetration of clean energy"; urges the Government of Spain to initiate as soon as possible the "necessary actions" to implement in the Archipelago, storage measures through hydro pumping, in those islands where it is viable, as well as the implementation of "offshore wind power".
With regard to insular and local actions, the declaration of energy emergency requests the island councils and municipalities of the Canary Islands to "review and develop" their territorial and urban planning plans, in such a way that, the use of "necessary land" for the installation of renewable energy infrastructures is taken into account.
