In the ranks of the Ecological Transition, they discount that the bottlenecks that threaten renewable deployment in Spain will also be a headache in the next legislature, which, one month before the general elections, means that the succession of bottlenecks in the processing of green permits to beto the hot potato that the portfolio headed by Teresa Ribera will leave the next government. Whether or not of the same political sign.
The problem derives from the milestone law for renewables, one of the star regulations promoted by the ministry that set a series of deadlines in which promoters had to prove that they had obtained certain administrative authorizations at the risk of losing the access permit. to the network, which in practice means the death of the project.
The next milestone, the fourth, corresponding to the construction authorization expired on July 25. The sector had been pressing the ministry for months to extend the deadline, understanding that it was materially impossible for the nearly a thousand projects that were queuing up to pass the process to pass the test on time, much less after the electoral advance. That is why renewable associations carry months demanding to the ministry an immediate adjustment in the calendarin order to cover their backs for what may happen in the elections on July 23.
The answer did not arrive until yesterday, when the Government approved in Council of Ministers a six month extension for the promoters to realize the fourth milestone. In the sector it was taken for granted that the ministry should act before the elections. Various industry sources agree in assessing the measure as “short-term.” “It is a form of don’t trap your fingers and leave the decision to the Government that comes out of the elections. Let the next ones decide, you solve the problem in the short term, but it will have to be solved in the medium term,” they point out from one of the energy employers.
In Ecological Transition they have chosen to tweak the regulatory framework to a minimum and respect the milestone model, so that the final deadline is maintained, that of the fifth objective, which sets the commissioning of hundreds of renewable plants by 2025.