The Canary Islands Association of Renewable Energies and the Lanzarote Chamber of Commerce organized an informative conference this Wednesday in which Jorge Morales de Labra, an expert engineer in energy and renewable energy activist, participated as a speaker. More than 50 people, including businessmen, technicians and public representatives from all over the island, attended the conference.
Morales de Labra sees no advantages in this energy reform that has just been approved. "It proposes more than a thousand pages, in less than ten days, to maintain the pre-established position of five companies that manage the electricity business throughout the country," he said at this conference.
In this sense, he explained that it is "cheaper to produce renewable energy with a photovoltaic panel placed at home than to buy energy from the conventional grid." This reality has driven "self-consumption" in recent years. However, the new energy reform "penalizes it by imposing a payment."
"The Government wants to privatize renewable energies through the backup toll by charging a fee for solar energy or wind," said Jorge Morales, referring to the privatization of the sun. "It's as if you put an orchard in your house and they want to charge you a toll for the fruit shop on your street, in case one day you don't have tomatoes and you have to buy them at the fruit shop," he explained.
In the opinion of this engineer, the measure "is outrageous" since, according to him, "it is the only country in the world that penalizes self-consumption instead of promoting it." The regulations also impose sanctions for those who do not register and declare that they have these facilities. These fines, described as "abusive" by Morales and the Canary Islands Association of Renewable Energies, can range between "30 and 60 million euros."
Renewables are "unstoppable"
The president of the Lanzarote Chamber of Commerce, José Torres Fuentes, assured that "despite the obstacles" of the new energy regulations, he is confident that renewables will end up "prevailing." "Self-consumption represents the new resurgence of renewable energies and recalls historical examples comparable to the case of coal, replaced by oil, or the fax, replaced by the Internet," he indicated. For the president of the Chamber it is "essential that the large lobbies stop putting obstacles and technology begins to be more efficient."
The president of the Canary Islands Association of Renewable Energies, Enrique Rodríguez de Azero, highlighted the defense of three aspects as fundamental regarding renewable energies, such as the possibility of executing new projects, maintaining those that are already within the necessary legal certainty and self-consumption. In this sense, he said that "far from being dangerous for the electricity sector," self-consumption "brings advantages, new jobs, greater efficiency and responsibility in consumption."
For this reason, he called on public authorities to develop "clear and simple regulations that encourage investment and do not leave it exclusively in the hands of large electricity groups."
