castanyes blaves

I just felt the urge to give you my 2 cents about the situation of climate and renewable energies in Spain, as I take some time to seriously investigate about it every once in a while:

(1) Solar energy

In Spain, if you happen to have a house where you can install solar panels for fotovoltaic energy, you have to:

Create a "business or fiscal society", set the panels, connect them to your electricity provider and wait for them to start paying you for the energy you generate.

Obviously it is extremely difficult for people to create a "business or fiscal society", even if it is sustainable and _economically feasible_ to do so.

Yes, I said economically feasible. I'll explain myself:

About 10 years ago, the King of Spain signed a law by which solar energy should be payed at a fixed rate of, if I can recall, something like 20cents/KW. So if you generate solar energy, you energy provider _has_ to pay you that money for the energy your solar panels generate. This means that, at least, you can pay the panels and installation out of the money you get from the energy you generate in 5-10 years (depending on the price/efficiency of the panels).

But in the last 8 P.P. (Partido Popular) years, they forced the people to constitute these "business or fiscal societies" if one wants to get paid.

What some people did in Catalonia is that you subscribe to a non-profit environmentalist society, and they deal with the bureautrivia so that you don't have to do all the messing, but just buy the panels, pay for the installation, and start to receive the checks.

So most of the people simply don't know about this, and even if they are interested in solar energy, they get deterred by the bureaucratic problems, and give up.

(2) Wind turbines

Aeolic energy has been found very profiting in Spain, and there are big companies like Gamesa making a lot of money out of it. If it weren't for the economic leverage, but only for environmental reasons, it wouldn't be so extended right now.

There are Aeolic parts all around the country, even at 20Kms away from my house:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avilella/7666392/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avilella/7666393/

They only problem with it right now is the killing of birds that don't see the helices, but in some regions with already impoverished fauna that is a minor problem.

At least, a minor problem compared with coal/oil/gas energy side-effects, which already are the main source of energy in Spain (apart from nuclear, if I can remember).

posted by avilella  # 10:18 AM