Court appeal against renewable energy cuts
By Alex Watkins AN APPEAL against the government’s royal decree regulating renewable energy investments has been lodged in the Supreme Court by the Valencian association of energy sector companies (AVAESEN).
The decree was made in order to apply the principal of ‘ reasonable profitability and financial sustainability to the electricity market’.
It sets out cutbacks to what investors receive for selling energy back to the grid that will cost the sector some €1,700 million nationwide and €231 million just in the Valencia region.
Furthermore, these cuts are backdated to July 2013, meaning investors in some renewable energy sources, particularly wind power, will have to pay back money they have already received. AVAESEN maintains that the decree implies a loss of income that makes some investments ‘totally unviable’.
They claim it requires spending and maintenance costs that are higher than their income, which is fixed by the government, and so ‘does not comply’ with the concept of reasonable profitability that the legislation itself refers to.
AVAESEN furthermore alleges that it ‘strips legitimate investments of legal protection, is a shadow expropriation of legally acquired rights and businesses, violates the European Energy Charter, paralyses the development of renewable energy sources, and violates the principal of legality and legislative arbitrariness’.
The association is also considering taking the case to the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice to get the decree annulled.
The cuts amount to 40% in the case of wind and solar power, and 22% for co-generation.
In the Valencia region this will cost solar power installations €102 million, wind power installations €80 million, co-generation €37 million, and the remaining €12 million will come from installations that use other energy sources, like biomass, solar-thermic, mini-hydraulic and waste.
As well as businesses, some of those worst affected will be small investors who, for example, installed solar panels on their homes.
The deadline to comply with the new requisites was yesterday (October 9), but the national solar power producers’ association (ANPIER) claims it was impossible for most to do this in time.
ANPIER insist the legislation is too complex and they received no official guidance, meaning that most will no longer be eligible to sell back the energy they produce.
This ‘information blackout’, they say, contrasts with the government’s massive publicity campaign to convince them it was a simple, safe and profitable way to invest their savings in the first place.