ENERGY-SPAIN: More Power from the Wind

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Natalia Ucero

MADRID, Jan 12 1999 (IPS) - Spain’s capacity to generate wind power has climbed to 930 megawatts, say Ecologistas en Acción (Ecologists in Action), an umbrella of non-governmental environmental organisations (NGOs).

The European nation occupies fourth place in the world wind- energy market after Germany (2,500 mw), the United States (2,000 mw) and Denmark (1,350 mw).

Wind is the fastest-growing energy source in the world, because it is clean and has little negative impact on the environment compared to other sources of energy, according to the international environmental group Greenpeace.

Ecologistas en Accion believes that by the year 2005, Spain’s wind-energy generation capacity needs to be increased to 10,000 megawatts – 10 percent of its total electricity requirement. This would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted as a result of the consumption of coal, gas and oil.

“It’s feasible if we consider that the existing wind-energy potential in our country will continue to increase at the same rate as the past two years,” a confederation spokesman told IPS.

Greenpeace stressed that each kilowatt/hour of energy generated from the wind meant a one-kg reduction in the amount of CO2 belched into the air.

Luis Iglesias, secretary-general of the state Institute for the Diversification and Conservation of Energy (IDAE) says wind energy could occupy an important place in the renewable energy sector in Spain, the European Union’s fifth largest producer of renewable energy.

The use of wind energy worldwide grew in 1998 by 35 percent to 9,600 megawatts, according to the Spanish edition of the international ecology magazine World Watch.

Within 20 years, wind energy could supply more than 10 percent of the world’s electricity and in the long term could surpass hydropower, which now accounts for 23 percent of the world total, added the magazine, published by the World Watch Institute in the United States.

At the end of 1998, the European Union, through the European Regional Development Fund signed onto an 80-million-dollar programme with IDAE to invest in medium and small-sized alternative energy projects, especially wind and solar power.

Although the programme’s top priority will be to double the number of solar panels in Spain, 20 million dollars will go to small wind-energy centres that supply small and medium-sized businesses.

The projects should be approved before the end of the year, and if all goes well, they will be implemented by 2001.

Beneficiaries will have eight years in which to repay interest- free loans at the annual inflation rate of the day, which in 1998 was 1.5 percent.