one of the windiest communities in Spain, has more than 60 large projects paralyzed by controversial judicial decisions, while regulations have just been approved that have further angered the sector, warning of an almost total interruption of investments. This brake on clean energy occurs in the midst of a neighborhood and environmental opposition that vigorously protests against the installation of wind turbines and denounces dozens of projects, while a chamber of the Superior Court of Xustiza of Galicia (TSXG) issues rulings contrary to the criteria of the rest of Spanish courts.
“The Galician community is a national benchmark for installed power, but right now it is a complicated territory for new projects,” summarizes Juan Virgilio Márquez, general director of the Wind Business Association (), the sector’s employers’ association. “Social opposition has come together from some platforms, which have found legal loopholes to paralyze 2,700 megawatts (MW) in dozens of projects – which could have been built this year and next – and a highly questioned change in legislation from the Xunta . This causes the sector to paralyze due to regulatory uncertainty,” he adds.
The first part of this puzzle is neighborhood resistance. “There is a lot of social opposition here because we are a territory where the population is very dispersed, so any project has population centers nearby. But Galicia continues to be treated as a sacrifice zone to supply other territories, without there being an adequate economic return,” says Belén Rodríguez, spokesperson for the Association for the Ecological Defense of Galiza (), which has called for numerous protests in the recent years throughout the community. The entity is part of the Así Non Wind Coordinator, which brings together 200 environmental and neighborhood platforms that have reported around 30 projects.
Many of these complaints have reached the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the TSXG, which has stopped dozens of projects that had already passed an environmental evaluation process and even had authorization to begin construction. , the Galician high court “has issued 151 orders relating to requests for the suspension of prior administrative and construction authorizations for 67 wind farms, of which 62 have been suspended.” In general, the court understands “that the execution of the projects could cause irreversible damage to sensitive environmental values.” The Xunta and the sector raise the paralyzed parks to more than 70, although they may be due to other causes.
“You can stop a project or even several because they do not meet the necessary environmental conditions, but doing so with more than 60 at a time already has a component of prior prejudice. The TSXJ has been putting a damper on the development of wind farms for a while now,” criticizes Fernando Ferrando, president of the , an entity that promotes the development of these energies. In fact, even the cinema has romanticized the opposition to these facilities. “The one on which it is based had nothing to do with a wind farm, but with communal lands, but [el director Rodrigo] Sorogoyen made us upset when he said at the Goya gala ”. I don’t think that in Galicia there is more opposition than in other areas, but there is a court that has decided to paralyze many projects,” he continues.
The TSXG understands that there is a formal flaw in the processing of the projects, given that when they are released to public information, not only the environmental impact study must be shown, but also all the associated technical and sectoral reports. That would mean challenging the , based on a European directive, which does not require that requirement.
“This conclusion makes sense, because the reports of the technical organizations are binding, they are not drawn up for the citizen to give their opinion. No project with an environmental impact assessment has been processed like this in Spain or Europe since 2013,” says Márquez, from the AEE employers’ association. “The higher courts of other communities, such as Andalusia and Madrid, have not followed this interpretation, and neither has the Supreme Court,” he continues.
For this reason, the Galician high court has submitted a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to see if it is right on this point, but while the decision arrives – which may take more than a year – those dozens of parks They will remain paralyzed. Both the Xunta de Galicia and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition have appeared before the CJEU to defend the opposite of the TSXG.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment of the “advocates accelerating the development of renewable energy projects to guarantee supply, decarbonization and the fight against climate change.” And remember that “Europe described renewable energies as being of higher public interest than any other interest.”
A controversial rule
Although the Executive of Alfonso Rueda (PP) wants to promote this renewable energy in the territory, it has just approved a very controversial rule for existing parks. According to a spokesperson for the Galician Ministry of Economy and Industry, the new Natural Resources Law – approved in November – obliges developers to sell 50% of the energy to Galician consumers and to repower wind farms that are more than 25 years old. . . However, it is still an expensive process and so far it is only being done with European aid.
“This measure will force the gradual removal of some 3,000 windmills from the Galician mountains, of the more than 4,000 that currently exist, to replace them with new, more powerful, state-of-the-art ones, which will considerably reduce the number of wind turbines,” explains the spokesperson. There are already 25 facilities that exceed that age, and another 75 will do so in the next five years.
“These two measures are outrageous and go against free competition and the free electricity market,” criticizes Ferrando. “Allocating part of the electricity to Galicia does not make sense in a liberalized market. Regarding repowering, what needs to be done is to encourage it with a stable framework, establish aid and accelerate administrative processes, but not force repowering in all cases.” Márquez, from AEE, points out that the entity will appeal these decisions and remembers that repowering requires a new environmental evaluation: “Some of the paralyzed parks are repowering.”
The Galician executive has evaluated 172 environmental impact statements since 2020, and in 63 cases it has decided that they are negative. Cristóbal López, from Ecologistas en Acción Galicia – integrated into the Así Non Wind Coordinator – points out: “The Xunta itself has paralyzed around 30% of the projects, sometimes because they were an environmental disaster and other times due to neighborhood pressure in against. There have been examples of bad practice such as the Amil area, or in the Sierra de Outes area, where parks are being built on top of wetlands, of high natural value. The problem is that in Galicia only 11% of the territory is protected by the Natura Network, when in Madrid it is 45%.”
Rodríguez, from Adega, third: “Wind projects that are subject to fraudulent fragmentation are being promoted, that is, they are part of larger wind projects to avoid the joint environmental impact assessment.” López, from Ecologistas en Acción, resumes: “Renewables should be installed by doing construction more carefully, not destroying the forest, and always with an environmental and social criterion that benefits the local population.” Ferrando summarizes: “The worst publicity for renewables is that they develop poorly, and outrages have been committed in some environments. But, in general, better things have been done than worse things. And if we do not bet on renewables, we continue using fossil fuels.”
