There are many ways to contribute to the energy transition.

Frans Tak

http://nos.nl/artikel/2039269-ruzie-in-gronings-dorp-om-windmolens.html

Jop Smit

Link: http://www.pbl.nl/en/infographic/renewable-energy-in-the-netherlands

So people organise themselves in local energy cooperations and start developing  i.e. local windfarms and solarpower farms.

http://urbantransform.eu/category/blogsarticles/articles/page/2/

NY Times: Renewable Energy Financing Hits a Snag

http://www.duurzaambedrijfsleven.nl/industrie/2714/startsein-voor-innovatieve-pyrolyse-fabriek-in-hengelo

Trinidad and Tobago’s first fully solar-powered energy-efficient home uses no power from the national grid and all of the electricity is produced from Solar Photo Voltaic (PV) panels. All hot water is provided using a solar water heater on the roof and the power of the sun provides full power for all the lighting and the appliances in the entire house. This is renewable energy in action.

September 9 (SeeNews) -  Morocco will launch a tender for the build-up of 850 MW in wind power capacity "within weeks", an informed source at the Moroccan electricity and water utility company (ONEE) told local daily L'economiste.

ONEE has already shortlisted several major groups that met the pre-qualification requirements. These include Spanish Acciona Energia and Acciona Wind Power, France's EDF Energies Nouvelles with Qatar Electricity and Water Company, Fipar Holding, and Alstom Wind as well as the Saudi group International Company for Water and Power Project in cooperation with Gamesa Eolica Sl. Among the shortlisted are also UK's International Power PLC with International Power LTD (UAE) and Vestas France SAS. Last but not least, Moroccan Nareva Holding has joined forces with Enel Green Power and Siemens Wind Power AS.

Commissioning of the tender projects is expected between 2017 and 2019.

Morocco currently has an installed wind power capacity of 787 MW with the latest 300 MW addition commissioned at the end of 2014. 

The 300 MW Tarfaya wind farm was developed by Tarec (Trarfaya Energy Company), a 50/50 joint venture of Nareva Holding and International Power Ltd. The site comprises 131 Siemens turbines and spreads on an area of  728 hectares. Its power output is estimated at over 1,000 GWh per year.  Tarfaya cost MAD 5 billion (USD 514m/EUR 460m) to build and created 500 permanent jobs.

Thanks to this project Morocco is now a regional leader in terms of installed wind power capacity, followed by Egypt with 650 MW and Tunisia with 240 MW.

I guess it's all about that. I haven't seen any energy transition projects without financial support. With money you can make the world. Ok, you also need will and faith.

http://www.energiedialoog.nl/?wpdmdl=205

The objective of the Dutch government to generate 16% renewable energy by 2023 is met as expected.

http://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/154741/Provincie-tekent-bezwaar-aan-tegen-fracken-Saaksum

https://www.ecn.nl/nl/energietrends/

http://www.eowijers.nl/?page_id=1207

Today witnessed the restart of the second reactor facility here in Japan. All reactors were off-line following the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and most of us here in Japan hoped that would be the new status quo. Unfortunately, the current government is hell-bent on restarting reactors across the country...very dangerous, very unfortunate...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/15/japan-restarts-second-nuclear-reactor-despite-public-opposition

http://www.withouthotair.com/

"Or do we just keep on making fat profits?"

Experts: energiereuzen werken onvoldoende aan energietransitie

Oman Observer. 2014. http://omanobserver.om/gutech-ecohaus-wins-eco-award/

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/11/us-climatechange-electricity-idUSKCN0S503Q20151011

Unfortunately, the Belgian Minister of Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development does exactly the opposite: about two weeks ago, she expressed doubts as to the nuclear phase-out, planned for 2025. And then she says : "investors" (in electrical power plants) "do not come when ordered".

The new Greek Minister of Energy and Environment, Panos Skourletis, announces new strategic goals, long-term energy planning, gradual independence from fossil fuels, measures to increase energy efficiency and greater market penetration for renewable energy sources. (article in Greek..)

The report is build on six pillars: Energy Policy Context, Demand, Electricity generation, Capacity and investment, Markets, & Environment.

Rijk zonder CO2: naar een duurzame energievoorziening in 2050

Rli - september 2015

Aanleiding en adviesvraag

Aanleiding voor dit advies is de vraag van minister Kamp van Economische Zaken aan de raad voor de leefomgeving en infrastructuur: hoe komen we tot een volledig duurzame energievoorziening in 2050?  De minister beschouwt het advies als belangrijke bouwsteen voor het Energierapport 2015.

All the talk in the electric utility industry these days seems to be about battery storage, but there are other ways to save generated electricity for later. 

With more demanding state renewable portfolio standards, the finalization of the EPA's Clean Power Plan and utilities increasingly turning to renewables as a least-cost option, grid operators are likely to need more and bigger storage options by the mid-2020s, if not before. 

“The excitement in the market now is around the policies we have in place, which very specifically exclude big pumped hydro applications,” explained California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) Sr. Advisor Mark Higgins, the VP/COO at Strategen Consulting. “Those policies were designed to create a diversity of technologies. Bulk storage would work against that.”

But, Higgins said, by around 2024, when California gets to about 40% renewables, there will be a real need to shift excess renewable energy supplies from the middle of the day to the late afternoon and evening. “That will require storage resources that can handle big amounts of energy over long periods of time.”

Higgins expects California regulators to again take the lead, as they did with the AB 2514 policy now driving battery technology growth, and put in place incentives for long duration storage technologies.

Pumped hydro promises big capacity

Pumped hydro storage (PSH) uses energy to move water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir where it can, at need, be released. The energy is recaptured as hydroelectric power as the water flows back to the lower reservoir.

“Pumped hydro's sweet spot is bulk energy shifting,” Higgins said. “But there are not many good sites left, upfront capital costs are high and policy support is limited." Such obstacles have limited excitement about pumped hydro's growth.

Duke Energy, however, says it is excited about pumped hydro, according to Spokesperson Lisa Parrish, because its quick start up time provides flexibility the utility needs. “Pumped storage functions like a giant water battery…At a moment’s notice, the stored water can be used to meet peak demand.”

The potential of Califonia’s Bison Peak 1 and 2 PSH Projects excites Alton Energy President Ed Duggan. Eagle Crest’s Eagle Mountain PSH Project was green-lighted first by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), in hopes of helping fill the gap left by the shuttering of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. But Duggan believes the combined 2,000 MW capacity of the Bison projects will have more benefits if he can get a green light from FERC.

“Bison 1 and 2 meet three crucial criteria,” he explained. “First, they are strategically located at an intersection point of the California grid and some of the biggest utility-scale wind and solar installations already online.”

He was describing the nearly 1,200 MW of photovoltaic solar in the Antelope Valley and the over 5,000 MW of wind capacity in the Tehachapi Mountains that form the Valley’s north boundary.

“Second, the Bison projects have a larger elevation differential than other proposed pumped storage projects,” Duggan said. Competitors include the privately funded Lake Elsinore project, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s Iowa Hills project, EDF’s Swan Lake project, and smaller ones proposed by the San Diego Water Authority.

“The greater elevation differential would allow Bison Peak to supply more power faster with less water,” Duggan explained.

Finally, he said, Bison Peak’s bulk storage would be geographically available through the Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric transmission systems to the Los Angeles and San Francisco region load centers.

Duggan believes the state will need at least 10 GW and possibly as much as 50 GW of bulk storage like PSH to meet the state’s targeted 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050.

Take the ARES train

But the bulk storage may not all come from PSH, according to Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) North America VP Francesca Cava.

“We are like pumped hydro but without the constraints of water,” Cava said. “And we estimate ARES requires about half the capital expenditure.”

ARES would use energy to do with box cars on a rail line what PSH does with water – push them up an incline so they can be released to generate electricity with their downhill momentum. The concept has been proven with a “peer-reviewed, patented” demonstration project in which ARES has moved a 6.5 ton rail car up a 15-inch gauge track with Tehachapi Mountain wind energy, according to the company.

It is a gravitational technology but an intriguing if fairly simple concept, Higgins said. “The questions are: What are the applications? And how cost effective is it versus something else?”

ARES will soon begin providing more answers, Cava said. They expect to be granted a Bureau of Land Management permit by the end of this year for a selected Nevada site and they expect to have an operational 50 MW project selling into the California grid’s ancillary services market via the Valley Electric Association cooperative utility by the end of 2017.

It will have a 78.3% round trip efficiency, a 34 second full charge to full discharge response, and a 40-year system life. Ultimately, the ARES team believes, projects with multiple, side-by-side lines can provide up to 3 GW of storage over a 24 hour duration. 

“Pumped hydro can be very large but so can ARES,” Cava said. “And twice the capacity is not twice the cost so it scales relatively economically.”

The case for CAES

There are only two operating utility-scale Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) facilities in the world, though others in the U.S., the UK, and Europe are in various stages of development. The 290 MW, four hour full-output Huntorf facility in Germany went into service in 1978. The 110 MW, 26-hour full-output McIntosh facility in Alabama went into service in 1991.

At both sites, energy is used to compress air into underground salt caverns. When that air is released, on demand, it turns generators that send electricity back to the grid.

CAES makes sense when there is a need for a long duration response of between 8 hours and 26 hours, Higgins said, because the cost is largely upfront. Compared to the linear cost of increasing batteries’ storage volume, it is not very expensive to expand a CAES facility's capacity.

“But,” he added, “it is not often you find a good storage site with all the advantages of the one in Utah being proposed for development by Burbank Water and Power (BWP) and its partners in the Pathfinder group. There is an underground salt cavern that happens to be next to a major transmission line and near sites of thermal plants scheduled to be shuttered.”

“Geology is the biggest hurdle for CAES,” acknowledged BWP Power Resources Manager Lincoln Bleveans. “But another company has already proven the viability of this geology by storing natural gas liquids there.”

BWP estimates it could build “about 90 caverns, each about the size and shape of the Empire State Building” in the underground salt deposits at Delta, Utah, Bleveans said.

Around 2010, BWP began to realize California’s renewables mandate was eventually going to increase. Talk was emerging about over-generation and the increasing need for stored energy to meet an increasing late-afternoon, post-solar-availability peak.

Bleveans and his team began more seriously considering the storage site near the Intermountain Power Project (IPP), from which the municipal utility already bought a small share of the facility’s 1,900 MW of coal-generated electricity. Adding to the site's appeal was that most of the IPP’s generation was already being sent along existing transmission to Southern California region munis.

BWP also discovered Pathfinder Wind Energy was beginning the process of developing up to 3 GW of Wyoming wind and investigating ways to deliver the electricity it could generate to West Coast load centers.

Soon BWP also discovered the Transwest Express, Gateway, and Zephyr high capacity transmission systems to be in development. All could potentially pickup Wyoming and other High Plains wind-generated electricity and deliver it to the storage site for later deliervy, on demand, to Western and Southwestern loads.

BWP, Pathfinder, equipment provider Dresser-Rand, transmission builder Duke-ATC, and technology supplier ABB recently won preliminary approval for a $628 Department of Energy loan guarantee that would allow them to develop a 300 MW pilot project at the Delta site, Bleveans said.

“CAES is very geology specific. It lives and dies on geology,” Bleveans repeated. “We are in due diligence mode. We are peeling the onion. And we haven’t cried yet. But we are still peeling the onion and trying to figure out if it is the right thing for our utility.”

Bleveans declined to provide cost information but the current facilities are averaging $1,600 per kW to $2,200 per kW, according to Energy Storage Update. The report puts PHS at $1,200 per kW to $2,100 per kW, lithium-ion batteries at $1,000 per kW to $2,000 per kW, and flywheel storage at $2,100 per kW to $2,600 per kW.

Flywheels struggle on cost

Though cost would appear an obstacle for flywheels, they can be cost effective when they are cycled frequently, Higgins said. “It is like a giant spring. Energy is used to wind it up and energy is released when it unwinds.”

But charge-discharge cycling doesn’t cause the same wear-and-tear in flywheels as it does in the chemistry of batteries, so performance degrades less.

“Flywheels are a short-duration, high-power resource,” Higgins said. “They are most cost-effective for fast response ancillary grid services.”

The PJM Interconnection and New York’s grid operator are both using 20 MW Beacon Power flywheels for frequency regulation, Higgins added.

But lithium ion battery storage seems to be most grid operators' preference in recent ancillary services contract bidding, verifying flywheel technology's lack of cost competitiveness as reflected in the Energy Storage Update cost information cited above.

Flywheels have, however, found some success in support of electric trains. “Flywheels can quickly deliver a lot of load as a fast train draws power to leave the station,” Higgins explained. “That avoids any strain on the grid from a sudden increased power demand.”

Storing the sun

Molten salt storage from the sun’s heat is just beginning to demonstrate its viability at U.S. solar power plants. Abengoa Solar’s 280 MW Solana parabolic trough solar power plant in the Arizona desert has proven it can provide Arizona Public Service with up to six hours of full capacity generation after dark or at other times when there is inadequate sun.

SolarReserve’s Crescent Dunes solar power tower, due online in October, will raise the bar by providing NV Energy with ten hours of stored 110 MW generation. Its system drives molten salts up to the top of a 540 foot tower and into a 100 foot tall receiver, where they are heated by the sun to 1050 degrees Fahrenheit. They then flow into a 3.6 million gallon hot tank.

At the utility’s need, the hot salts are released to flow past a closed water system in a heat exchanger where they transfer half their heat to boil the water. The steam drives a 110 MW turbine to generate electricity and is largely recaptured. The molten salts flow, at 550 degrees Fahrenheit, to the “cold” tank to await another cycle.

The price of these “solar thermal” technologies includes the cost of both generation and storage. SolarReserve’s power purchase agreement with NV Energy set the price of its output at $0.132 per kWh.

Recently, photovoltaic (PV) solar projects that generate power from the sun’s light have been bidding for utility contracts at and below $0.05 per kWh, pushing concentrating solar power projects like Solana and Crescent Dunes out of the market.

But PV solar can only be stored in batteries or other technologies that hold electricity. They are more expensive, less efficient, and less scalable than molten salts, according to SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith. With renewables mandates rising, utilities will soon see the value of stored solar heat to meet an increasing late afternoon-early evening peak in demand, he said. As Utility Dive has reported, storage capabilities could prove to be the savior for large CSP projects in the coming years.

The coolest tech: Ice storage

Ice Energy and CALMAC provide thermal storage at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum from solar power plant developers.

Both companies are leaders in shifting the energy used to cool buildings from when the day is hottest, demand on the grid is highest, and electricity is most expensive, to the cooler night when demand is low and abundant, wind-generated electricity can be bought from most grid systems at very low prices.

Both companies’ devices attach to building air conditioning (A/C) units. They freeze water at night so when cooling is needed the next day, the draw from the A/C is sharply reduced.

CALMAC’s business model focuses on building owners, winning customers by simply cutting their electricity bills. The technology can have a huge impact, especially where high demand charges from peaking A/C use can be controlled.

Ice Energy partners with utilities. Though already widely used across the U.S., its Ice Bear product got its biggest recognition yet by winning 16 contracts for 26 MW of distributed and behind-the-meter storage in the Southern California Edison (SCE) 2014 local capacity requirement (LCR) bidding.

By allowing the utility to control if and when the Ice Bear is used, the technology acts as a demand response resource, Higgins said. SCE expects to eventually be able to cut its peak load, when necessary, by 95% of the contracted 26 MW with the flip of a control switch, according to Ice Energy.

Building cooling is unaffected, but if SCE throws the switch, the cooling would be coming from wind energy-generated power, which helps the utility meet its renewables mandate. That electricity would also be lower priced.

BWP, Glendale Water & Power, Redding Electric Utility, and Riverside Public Utilities also employ the Ice Energy technology, according to Energy Storage Update.

Ice Energy’s business is expanding quickly, reported Chief Information Officer Chris B. Tillotson. It already has 12MW installed and 30MW contracted for and it is working on a development pipeline of over 100 MW. It is also readying an Ice Cub residential product, which should hit the market in time to be an early player in the aggregated distributed energy resources markets being developed in California and New York.

The best tech depends on location

“We believe this is the only non-battery distributed storage technology,” Tillotson said, taking the cooling technology out of competition with the bulk providers.

For all the gravity-driven bulk storage technologies, Higgins said, “the question is whether the final engineering costs make it cost-effective.”

“We are comparable to pumped hydro but it is easier to locate and build an ARES project, way easier because pumped hydro depends on water,” Cava said. “We need land and a mild grade but we have found at least 27 sites just in the state of California.”

I don’t want to say PHS, ARES, or CAES is better, Bleveans said. CAES seems to have great potential if you have the right geology. LA DWP’s Castaic PHS facility proves the right geology and topography can make that a terrific solution. And with the right conditions, an ARES project might be good, too.

"At the scale of bulk storage," Bleveans explained, “you have to be agnostic about technology because the technology has to be driven by site conditions.”

The Government of Tamil Nadu realized the importance and need for renewable energy, and set up a separate Agency, as registered society, called the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency (TEDA) as early as 1985,as per G.O.Ms.No.163, P. & D. (EC) Department, dated 29.11.1984 with the following specific objectives:-

1. To promote the use of new and renewable sources of energy (NRSE) and to implement projects therefore.
2. To promote energy conservation activities.
3. To encourage research and development on renewable sources of energy.

Renewable Energy Installations 

Achievements of TEDA as on 31.7.2014

INSTALL SOLAR ON HOUSE – SAVE UPTO RS.14,700 PER YEAR

Interested in solar rooftop for your house? You need to pay Rs 43,700 to Rs 60,000 for 1 KW after subsidy       

I like to drop another view on energy: Personal energy awareness is also part of success in energy transition. This is were a society has to start. A healthy planet starts with health people. So I would suggest to take a broad perspective when we want to transit, therefore my article is linked to personal relevancy: Therefore my article is about energy transition in our body. Obesitas is a result of imbalance in our personal energy system. Energy balance is the key word. It is not only about techniques, it is about mindset and use of power. Therefore this example to broaden the discussion.

http://vorige.nrc.nl//international/article2421024.ece/Obesity_on_the_rise_among_Dutch_children

According to last weeks news, a study conducted by 6 Dutch NGO's show that energy companies have chosen to burn "cheap" coal rather then develop and invest in more sustainable forms of energy.

This has resulted in very little progress wrt. development of more Sustainable energy systems since the signing off on the Dutch National Energy agreement for Sustainable growth 2 years ago. ("Nationaal Energie akkoord voor duurzame groei")

See news article below (in Dutch)

http://nos.nl/artikel/2065267-stroom-wordt-steeds-minder-groen.html

Full Dutch report is in attachment below

The Polish elections results are official as from today. Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), a conservative and Eurosceptic party, has taken enough seats to govern alone – a precedent in 26 years. The biggest challenge ahead for the new government is securing an economically viable model of energy supply. The issue has little relevance to the heated Polish debate about the European climate package. Sandbag is looking forward to the first steps of the new government hoping they will treat it as an opportunity to support already emerging market and consumer solutions.

Competing uses of biomass for energy and chemicals: Implications for long-term global CO2 mitigation potential

Biomass is considered a low carbon source for various energy or chemical options. This paper assesses it′s different possible uses, the competition between these uses, and the implications for long-term global energy demand and energy-system emissions. A scenario analysis is performed using the TIMER energy system model. Under baseline conditions, 170 Exajoule/year of secondary bioenergy is consumed in 2100 (approximately 18% of total secondary energy demand), used primarily in the transport, buildings and non-energy (chemical production) sectors. This leads to a reduction of 9% of CO₂ emissions compared to a counterfactual scenario where no bioenergy is used.

• to the article (doi)
• to the TIMER model

Bioenergy can contribute up to 40% reduction of emissions at carbon taxes greater than 500$/ton of Carbon. As higher CO₂ taxes are applied, bioenergy is increasingly diverted towards electricity generation. Results are more sensitive to assumptions about resource availability than about technological parameters.

To estimate the effectiveness of bioenergy in specific sectors, experiments are performed in which bioenergy is only allowed in one sector at the time. The results show that cross-sectoral leakage and emissions from biomass conversion limit the total emission reduction possible in each sector.

In terms of reducing emissions per unit of bioenergy use, we show that the use of bioelectricity is the most effective, especially when used with carbon capture and storage. However, this technology only penetrates at a high carbon price (>100$/ton of Carbon) and competition with transport fuels may limit its adoption.

Spain's Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Transport announced this spring that it would hold an auction for the installation of 500 MW and 200 MW of new wind and biomass power capacities, respectively. The date for the auction was not announced but it is expected that the call for submissions will be published in the State Official Bulletin in the near future. Bids for solar power capacity need not apply.

Sun Edison project in Caravaca de la Cruz (near Murcia), Spain. Credit: UNEF.

The Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) was upset by the news and is currently working to have solar PV technology, which it called "the most competitive in the world," included in the auction. "The attempted eradication of the photovoltaic industry from the government does not have any explanation," said Jorge Barredo, President of UNEF, adding that solar is highly competitive "not only between renewable energies, but also compared with traditional fossil fuels."

The exclusion of solar PV from the recent auction announcement was not the only blow against the solar PV sector. Pedro Palencia, energy policy director at UNEF explained that earlier this year Spain's government announced an auction for new power capacity for the Canary Islands that only sought wind. The Canary Islands complex is located in the North West Africa and has the highest solar irradiation in Spain.

Self-Consumption "Sun Tax" In The Making

There are other concerns regarding Spain's current policy framework for the self-consumption of PV power and the lack of net-metering. The current self-consumption policy framework is very general and applies to both on- and off-grid systems. The government said it would publish the detailed regulations soon, adding that it is considering imposing a tariff that UNEF calls a "sun tax." Effectively, this would mean that PV system owners will be taxed for the power they produce even if it is solely for their own use and not fed into the grid.

UNEF said that a "sun tax" like that would make solar uneconomical even for self-consumption. Net-metering, a policy found in almost all other Mediterranean countries, including Portugal, Italy, Greece and Cyprus, is not available in Spain.

The Flawed Spanish Energy Market

The Spanish energy sector faces serious problems stemming from caps on retail electricity prices, which have lead to market distortions. According to David Robinson of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, since 2001 the Spanish electricity system has accumulated a €30 billion deficit resulting from inadequate tariffs that were not high enough to cover electricity transmission and distribution costs, renewable and conventional energy subsidies and other regulated costs. All Spanish governments have been unwilling to pass the full costs on to customers, and the current situation has worsened due to a decrease in energy demand, the high costs of renewable subsidies and more specifically a terribly wrong remuneration policy for solar PV systems in 2007 to 2012, said Robinson.

Large solar installation in Spain. Credit: UNEF.

Solar on a residence in Spain. Credit: UNEF.

According to Robinson, the accumulated debt, "accounts for about 55 percent of a typical customer's electricity cost, with the remaining 45 percent associated with the wholesale price of energy."

UNEF's Palencia confirms this. "The actual costs covering the electricity generation in Spain count for less than half of the consumer's electricity bill and vary according to the power prices. The biggest chunk of the electricity bill covers a huge list of other costs, non-related to the fluctuating power prices of the wholesale market. Such fixed costs are set by the government, which aims to increase them further," Palencia said. "Under these circumstances, we [UNEF] don't see how self-consumption can become competitive in Spain," Palencia remarked.

...continued from Digital Edition

Overcapacity and Depressed Demand

Last year's new RD413/2014 renewable energy law paved the way for public procurement auctions for new power plants, which are expected to take place in 2016 at the earliest. The recent announcement to auction 700 MW of new wind and biomass capacities took analysts by surprise. Spain's major energy sector problem is "excess capacity together with depressed demand," Aitor Ciarreta, professor of Economics at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao said. 

UNEF's Palencia agrees. "Spain has installed almost double the power capacity it currently needs and this problem tends to increase further due to the weak state of the economy and the depressed demand," he remarked. 

A glimpse of hope shined in February when Spain and France opened a new transmission line interconnecting the two countries and doubling the electricity exchange among them. The new line, which has a power capacity of 2 GW and is capable of reversing the direction of flow of the energy exchanges between Spain and France in just 50 milliseconds, is expected to boost Spanish electricity exports to France and alleviate Spain's overloaded system. Spain is considered one of Europe's energy islands being largely disconnected from the rest of Europe and the new line, which is expected to go into commercial operation in June, can provide a small, partial solution. 

According to the latest statistics published today by Spain's electricity grid operator Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the electricity generation from January to April 2015 consisted of 22.9 percent wind power, 23.1 percent nuclear, 15.4 percent coal, 14.3 percent hydro, 10 percent co-generation technologies, 8.4 percent combined cycle gas, 2.8 percent solar PV, 1.7 percent thermal renewable technologies and 1.4 percent solar thermal. In April alone, an impressive 63.9 percent of electricity generation came from technologies producing zero carbon dioxide emissions, including nuclear energy. 

In terms of installed renewable power capacity, wind leads with more than 23 GW, hydro has installed about 2.1 GW, solar PV 4.7 GW, solar thermal 2.3 GW and other renewable thermal technologies around 1 GW. Spain's total energy system has approximately 110 GW of installed power capacity. 

Policy Soup 

Spain's latest renewable energy RD413/2014 law, passed last year scrapped feed-in tariffs (FITs) altogether. Instead, each project receives an income calculated separately per project and based on a series of parameters that take into account a plant's “efficient operation.” 

Based on the latest law, subsidy payments "to renewable power plants, (especially wind plants), with certain age, almost disappear. For newer plants the new system pays the ‘recognized cost' which is an amount to recover fixed cost and variable cost associated to capital cost," Professor Ciarreta said.

Furthermore, renewable power plants are now obliged to compete with all other forms of energy in the wholesale market in equal terms. "All the units must go through the pool. Renewable units are not the ones indicated to be used as secondary or tertiary reserves. They sell as much electricity as they can. Clearly, units that benefit are those with low variable cost, while the price in the pool should remain low because of the overcapacity of the system" Ciarreta added. 

Most stakeholders agree that a new policy framework was needed to cut the deficit and establish regulatory stability. But critics say the reform didn't result in a convincing restructuring of the country's wholesale and retail energy markets, rather it is a patchwork that penalizes renewable power investments. 

A crucial question is how Spain's energy mix will be decided. Given that the new renewable energy policy obliges renewable power plants to participate in the pool and compete in the wholesale market, one would expect market forces alone would drive the country's energy mix but the latest government announcement indicates that the opposite is happening. The government will dictate the energy mix deciding the size and sort of installations. 

Specifically, the Spanish government appears to object to the disruptive nature of smaller, distributed solar PV installations in favor of the incumbents. But such policy aims are already outdated. The emerging new energy landscape worldwide is moving toward a decentralized power system that empowers the consumer and communities to make decisions on a level-playing field.

Critics say that Spanish energy policy lacks the long-term vision that will keep it up-to-date with the latest technological progress and encourage future investments in the most market-friendly way, decided by the consumer. Instead, the present policies, although by and large have abolished the renewable power subsidies, are subject to favoritism and lobbying, hindering consumers and businesses to make their own energy choices.