The Cabildo of Lanzarote will request the Government of the Canary Islands to halt the processing of the Canary Islands Energy Transition Plan 2030 (PTECAN) while preparing allegations for "not considering appropriate the location criteria considered for the development of suitable areas for the installation of renewable infrastructures."
"Lanzarote must commit to renewable energies to achieve the decarbonization objective, but without causing a negative impact on our landscape," said the island's president Oswaldo Betancort, aware that "it is necessary to invest in clean energy generation technologies, always ensuring the environmental and territorial protection of the island of Lanzarote."
"In addition, from the Cabildo we will advocate for the consensus of all institutions and society when making decisions that affect the population and the image of Lanzarote," said Betancort.
In that same line, the area councilor, Jesús Machín Tavío, says that "a multidisciplinary team formed by legal technicians and from the areas of territorial policy, environment, energy and heritage, is preparing the relevant allegations to avoid poor territorial planning that means installing renewable infrastructures in an invasive way and drawing a Lanzarote full of windmills and photovoltaic panels with the negative impact that it would imply," he explained.
"This type of energy has to penetrate the island but, of course, guaranteeing the proportionality between the provision of energy and the conservation of the landscape," he added.
Once the document has been analyzed by the technical team of the Cabildo, the appropriate allegations will be presented before August 23, which is the new deadline set by the area of Climate Change and Energy Transition of the Canary Islands.
The PTECAN identifies in Lanzarote 89 square kilometers with potential to produce wind energy
The Climate Change and Energy Transition Law of the Canary Islands establishes that "the Energy Transition Plan of the Canary Islands will establish the location criteria for renewable energy facilities in accordance with the provisions in this regard." In this sense, within the framework of the PTECan, an orientative zoning has been defined which marks the regions of the Canary archipelago where, in the absence of a specific study by a singular project, the installation of these technologies would be plausible.
This zoning is especially necessary for distributed generation technologies that demand space, such as onshore and offshore wind, photovoltaic farms or ocean energies. However, the Cabildo of Lanzarote is cautiously studying the suitability of the alternatives proposed from the Canary Islands to occupy a space that they consider excessive for this purpose.
Regarding the availability of space for the installation of wind farms in Lanzarote, the current document includes the availability of space for the installation of onshore and offshore wind infrastructures, photovoltaic farms or ocean energies.
In the case of wind farms, the available area is 89.3 km and a power of 1,332 Mw, for which they present 3 alternatives that can be consulted on the Energy portal of the Government of the Canary Islands. In the same way that, for the installation of photovoltaic plants, the space and power that appear as available is 196 km and 19,600 Mw, respectively.
