The presentation of the Renewable Energy Planning on land in Lanzarote is approaching. The Government of the Canary Islands has visited the island in recent days to pressure, so it seems, for us to increase the percentage of MW installed from renewables, since they have set a goal for this archipelago to reach a penetration of renewables of 50% in the next four years. At the moment, that penetration of renewables is 20%, and it has already taken away landscapes, biodiversity, and quality of life from citizens of these islands who have seen how wind and photovoltaic farms are approved next to their homes in islands like Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, or Tenerife.
Has anyone wondered what landscape, biodiversity, and quality of life destruction the 30% penetration of renewables that the Canary Islands government aspires to place in the next four years will entail? Well, calculate double the windmills and solar farms already installed. Clean energy, dirty landscapes.
This percentage will include the Gran Canaria offshore wind farm, which is supposed to produce a lot of clean energy, but no one talks about the possible dangers of collision with these mills, not only for marine animals but also for boats, in islands that depend on desalination plants for the production of drinking water. It must be remembered that in Lanzarote we still have the task of definitively removing the island from the Ministry's POEM, which approves wind turbines of 300m. high in Playa Bastián and from 2030 throughout Costa Teguise.
In the Balearic Islands, the installed renewable electrical power is 11%, in Menorca it is much lower than in Lanzarote. It would seem that the Balearic Islands do take care of their landscapes, as a tourist resource. In Catalonia, the groups that work to stop offshore wind power on the Costa Brava, allege ignorance of how the sea and its biodiversity in the Mediterranean will react, but also that they are not willing to destroy the beauty of their horizon. The renewable illusion in the Canary Islands has no limits, and they completely depart from the reality of these fragile and tourist island territories.
Returning to Lanzarote, we hope that the ordinance of renewables on land will be as they have been advancing from the Cabildo and no more mills will be allowed. Let those that are waiting on the dock be installed, let those that are waiting for maintenance contracts be put into operation, let the wind farm of Los Valles be modernized. The safest path in Lanzarote, given the characteristics of the island's electrical system, is self-consumption, the installation of photovoltaic panels on roofs, in industrial buildings, advancing in residential and industrial energy communities, and waiting for new technical advances that allow storage with batteries of solar panels in single-family homes.
May it never again be approved in the Government of the Canary Islands, without clear presentations to the island institutions, renewable plans that allow expropriating land throughout the island to place wind turbines scattered throughout the island territory, in Timanfaya, in Jameos, in Famara, in all the towns. In the name of climate change, the Energy Transition Plan of the Canary Islands PTCAN almost destroys this island, everything that makes us different, to take advantage of subsidies and put mills whose energy could hardly be used in the thermal power plant. The PTCAN has been an energy and institutional betrayal to Lanzarote, to the locals and to our island model.
In Lanzarote, wind is poetry and not energy
Micaela Ferrer from the Eólica Zero Lanzarote Platform
