Articles by ecothrust at Technorati Headline Animator

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Spain forges ahead, exports Renewable Energy

http://bit.ly/7XwAG

Spain, traditionally  the second largest producer of renewable energy in Europe just overtook leader Germany. Spain produced 42,976 gigawatt-hours of power, compared to 36,500 for Germany during 2010. Both are leaders in Europe's renewable energy drive and Spain with a better capacity utilization was able to have a higher output despite having a lower installed capacity.  In March 2011 alone Spain produced 4,728 GW of Power of which the largest segment  of 21 % was from Wind Farms according to data from Red Eléctrica de España  followed by Nuclear Power and Hydro Electric making it the leading green nation having the lowest carbon footprint in the developed world.



Spain which adopted path breaking legislation, the Royal Decree 661/2007 to promote green energy was the first nation which went all out to provide long term incentives to renewable energy industry. Though there has been some criticism of the policy because it raised the overall energy cost initially, and the solar energy sector did not deliver profits as promised,  the long term benefits of the policy was that it has today the topmost producers amongst both wind energy and solar like Gamesa, Accionia,  Iberdola, and half a dozen others.
Now with the legislation due for change after five years in 2012, the renewable energy manufacturers are hopeful of a more dynamic policy,because it has not only lowered the generation cost to 38 Euro / MWh as compared to 47.5 Euro/ MWh in France where nuclear power is prime source.

Thanks to renewable energy,  Spain today with its lower cost and surplus generation has turned into a net exporter of energy in the EU after Germany, Czechoslovakia and France, exporting 8.3 TWh of electricity
As renewable energy, especially the  wind energy farms reduces price of power, it is increasingly becoming easier for them to export power. A new project lead by Gamesa is now visualizing state of art 15 MW offshore wind turbines by 2020 which could make renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels in the long run.








1 comment:

  1. solar did'nt make a profit is this why Spain is a basket case

    ReplyDelete