Spain wants to lead in renewable energy
Country wants to return to the helm after it cut subsidies during the global financial crisis
Aformer global champion of renewable energy, Spain wants to make up the ground it lost during the economic crisis when it reversed its policy slashing subsidies and decimating the sector.
With roughly 300 days of sunshine per year and regions that receive strong winds, Spain was a world leader in 2007-08 in solar and wind power production, helped by generous state subsidies.
But the sharp economic downturn that followed the collapse of a decade-long property bubble in 2008 put the brakes on the development of renewable energy as the government scaled back support.
Jorge Puebla, a 41-year-old firefighter, suffered the fallout from his energy investment.
“They ruined my life,” the father of two said.
He and his wife had invested €1 million (Dh3.89 million, $1.1 million) in 2007 in a solar energy farm in the northeastern region of Castile and Leon.
They borrowed €800,000 from a bank with Puebla’s parents acting as the loan guarantors.
Solar investors like Puebla were lured by a law passed under the Socialist government in power in 2007. It guaranteed producers a so-called solar tariff of as much as 44 cents per kilowatt-hour for their electricity for 25 years.
At that rate the couple thought they could easily make their monthly loan repayments of €8,400.
But the government did not keep its promise. Faced with a ballooning budget deficit, in 2011 it cut the subsidies that were intended to stimulate the growth of the renewable energy.