The Government of the Canary Islands has sided with the Cabildo of Lanzarote by upholding the appeal for reconsideration filed by the president, María Dolores Corujo, against the authorization of the ‘Vista Mar Wind Farm’ project, of 6.00 MW, promoted by Renovertis, SL, in the municipality of Teguise.
As soon as she learned of the agreement, the president of the Cabildo stated: “I expected us to be proven right, because we are, although we share with the Government of the Canary Islands the need to promote renewable energies, but we understand that their deployment must be orderly to guarantee the conservation of our most valuable asset, our landscape.”
It all began in October 2021, when the Minister of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning declared the works necessary for the execution of the ‘Vista Mar Wind Farm’ project to be of general interest. Thus began the exceptional procedure provided for in article 6 bis of Law 11/1997, of December 2, regulating the Canary Islands Electricity Sector.
Said article establishes that, for reasons of “urgency” or “exceptional interest”, the Government ministry competent in Energy “may declare the general interest of the works necessary” for generation, transport or electrical distribution facilities.
During said exceptional procedure, the mandatory consultation with the Cabildo of Lanzarote was carried out regarding the conformity or nonconformity of the project with the territorial and urban planning in force. The Cabildo of Lanzarote, in effect, responded and opposed, but the General Directorate of Energy, erroneously reported that the Cabildo had not responded to the request for a report, a silence that was not such but that gave rise to the misunderstanding that it was favorable to the installation of the wind farm.
Said exceptional procedure culminated with the authorization of the ‘Vista Mar Wind Farm’. As is natural, the Cabildo of Lanzarote filed an appeal for reconsideration alleging, in short, that, “contrary to what is indicated in the background of the Decree”, the Cabildo “did expressly show, through its governing bodies, its disagreement with the proposed installation”, and it was requested “that Decree 46/2022, of February 24, be suspended and revoked.”
Among its arguments, the Cabildo of Lanzarote stated that this type of authorization “in practice involves resorting to an alleged general interest (…) at the cost of generating a significant landscape impact on an island of special vulnerability.” On the other hand, it underlined that the landscape of Lanzarote “presents a special fragility since the absence of significant reliefs and the lack of wooded areas mean that any intervention in the rural environment is easily appreciable from a great distance when precisely the conservation of the island landscape constitutes, now yes, an objective of general interest.”
In addition, the Cabildo expressed “its willingness to drastically increase the percentage of electricity generated through renewables, but also considers the need to regulate, through a specific instrument, the locations in which this type of facility can be deployed.”
The new Decree corrects the error committed and states that the agreement adopted by the Cabildo of Lanzarote “was not sent by the General Directorate of Energy, so it was not submitted to the Government of the Canary Islands, which is why it is reasonable to consider that the Governing Council lacked a relevant element for the adoption of the agreement, as well as that, had it known the unfavorable opinion of the Island Corporation, that agreement would have been unfavorable.”
