Spain and Portugal have decided to join forces to press the European Commission and France so that. And the mass blackout suffered by the Iberian Peninsula on April 28 is the powerful argument that both countries have, whose leaders repeat from the cutting of the supply that increasing that interconnection is the way to win in security. Both governments prepare two letters – a directed to the European Commissioner of Energy, the Danish Dan Jørgensen, and another to the French Minister of Energy, Marc Ferracci – pressing the increase of that union, according to the governments of both countries.
The letter addressed to the European Commissioner will be delivered in hand by the Portuguese Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria Da Graça Carvalho, this Wednesday in Brussels. “We have opinions of technicians who tell us that the recovery during the blackout would have been much faster with better connections,” said the minister in statements to El País on Monday.
The elaboration of the two writings has been agreed at the videoconference meeting that Carvalho has held with the third vice president and minister for the ecological transition of Spain, Sara Aagesen. “Our intention is that I can personally deliver the letter to the commissioner to expedite deadlines,” says the Portuguese minister. The other writing, explain sources from the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition, will be addressed to Minister Ferracci, who will be claimed a meeting. The sources of the Aagesen department explain that Brussels will be urged to push France to accept that interconnection, and to the Gallic Government to collaborate.
After the blackout both Aagesen and Carvalho have not hidden their criticisms of France. In, the Portuguese minister reproached that it does not expedite the interconnections “because it has a lot of nuclear energy”, whose competitiveness can be affected by the progress of renewables from the south. “We are facing barriers to the domestic market, which is the pillar of European construction, and France, not supporting the speed with which we intended to build these interconnections, it is placing barriers to the domestic market,” he said.
For his part, Aegesen, said: “It is time for France to be aware that interconnections have to arrive yes or yes (…) Europe must give certainty that this interconnection will continue to advance diligently.”
The blackout is, a powerful touch of attention on several fronts. It clear that storage (batteries and pumps), in addition to a powerful Economic stabilizer For renewable energy producers ,. Also that interconnections with the rest of Europe, another historic Iberian Achilles heel, need an acceleration to reach the community objectives, more and more distant.
Aware for years of the delay, the governments of Spain and Portugal have taken in recent days a step forward in their pressure to Paris to give their arm to twist and leave their repeated negative to throw new cables through the Pyrenees. On the last Hispanic-Portuguese summit, both countries agreed a joint statement in which it pointed out precisely. “The two governments highlight the prevailing need to accelerate the reinforcement of their electrical interconnections,” said that text.
Despite there being an extension work in the Gulf of Vizcaya – of which the first stone has just been put and -, the interconnection will continue well below the community objectives. Pyrenean interconnection today has a capacity of 2.8% of the power generation power installed in the system. When the expansion is ready, in the Vizcaya Gulf, it will be around 5%. Far, however, of the community objective: 10% from 2020 and 15% from 2030.
The urgency of expanding that capacity is maximum. No one can guarantee 100% that a greater degree of interconnection through the Pyrenees would have avoided the blackout: as practically all the contributions, it is almost impossible to demonstrate. However, there is a palmaria reality that all the voices of the sector consulted in recent days share: the larger and interconnected an electrical system, the less likely it is that it occurs. And the Iberian, clearly, is far from being fully integrated with its neighbors of the north and the east.
France’s refusal responds, above all, to an economic account of the most basic: for a country so dependent and historically rooted in nuclear energy, Iberian renewables, much cheaper, are an important threat from the point of view of the price. And the best way to keep them at bay is to stop any attempt to throw new transmission lines with the peninsula.
Although well known by any observer of the energy sector, the Spanish and Portuguese authorities had not wanted to put that black calculation on white in any public statement. Until a few days ago.
At present, 14 of the 27 Member States are already above 15% interconnection that sets Europe by 2030, most of them in central and northern Europe. Five other countries meet the current objective, but they still have their way to go to reach the end of the decade. OTHER EIGHT, BETWEEN THESE SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, still do not even reach the current goal since 2020. “If they end in time, interconnection projects [en marcha] They will improve connectivity levels. But more interconnections are needed in some regions, particularly in view of the increase in renewable generation, ”reads a public document recently updated by the European Commission.
The Community Executive has at his disposal a powerful sanctioning arsenal if he considers that one of its member states (France, in this case) deliberately slows the interconnection capacity of two other neighbors (Spain and Portugal, which total almost 60 million inhabitants themselves). A possibility that would go through the opening of an infraction procedure and that, however, Brussels has refused to explore for now.
