Iberdrola’s Director of Climate Change Saenz de Mira
“In renewables there are more investments today in the US and China”, says Gonzalo Saenz de Miera, Director of Climate Change at Iberdrola, a world leader in renewables, in an interview with Energy Post. “Europe is losing its leadership.” Saenz de Miera calls for a binding target for 2050, not just 2030, and for it to be more ambitious than the current 80-95% greenhouse gas emission reduction. He also advocates “polluter pays” taxation that puts a heavier burden on transport. Iberdrola is not optimistic on power-to-gas and believes gas is “niche and replaceable”.
Iberdrola is one of the world’s largest electricity utilities and a leader in renewables. It has almost 30GW of installed renewables capacity and leads the world on wind. Its emissions are about a third lower than the European electricity sector average. Since the economic crisis, Iberdrola has focused on five markets: Spain (its home market), the UK, the US, Mexico and Brazil.
On 23 April, Iberdrola’s Director of Climate Change Gonzalo Saenz de Miera came to Brussels to make the case for a more ambitious European climate policy. The company wants the EU to set a binding target for 2050, not just 2030, and for it to be more ambitious than the current 80-95% greenhouse gas emission reduction committed to by heads of state and government. The goal should be “fully aligned” with the Paris Agreement. In practice, that probably means going to a net zero economy, although Iberdrola is not (yet) backing the Europen Parliament’s call for a “net zero emissions” goal in a new governance regulation that is part of the EU’s Clean Energy Package.
“My message is that far from being a barrier to economic development, this is a unique opportunity to create prosperity,” Saenz de Miera told Energy Post in an interview to concide with his visit. Iberdrola’s call comes as the European Commission prepares a new 2050 climate strategy for the EU for release in November, and governments meet for a preparatory round of talks in Bonn, Germany, ahead of the next UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland, in December. Iberdrola recently submitted recommendations for global climate action to feed into this process.
Saenz de Miera was in Brussels to present an analysis showing that decarbonisation of the energy sector in Spain – and by extension much of the rest of Europe, he said – is viable. Iberdrola’s number one policy ask to make this happen is “fiscal reform based on the “polluter pays” principle”. In other words, like Eon’s CEO Johannes Teyssen earlier this year, it proposes an extension of the carbon price and renewables levy from the power sector to heating and cooling and transport. Portugal has already done it and Spain is thinking about it, Saenz de Miera noted.
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The sentiments expressed by Mr de Miera are worthy. However, I have a couple of questions with respect to Spain.
1. Are households in Spain allowed to install PV & battery storage – without using intermediaries such as e.g. Iberdrola.
2. Is the legislation that was in force in 2016 (the sun tax) – still in force – which forbids households from installing PV & battery storage – without using intermediaries such as Ib’?
3. Given the legislation in force in 2016, how was Iberdrola (and I guess other companies) able to run adverts in Spanish newspapers aimed at households and small companies – selling PV and storage?
3a. Did/does Iberdrola support the “Sun Tax”?
The Spanish energy company GasNatural Fenosa announced that it would build 300MW of on-shore wind with no subsidy. The output from the projects would be folded into Fenosa’s existing portfolio. This begs the question:
4: If Fenosa was doing it in 2015 – why not all other companies in the Spanish electricity market?
5. Why does the Spanish gov still need to hold auctions? (it held one recently).
6. Extending Q5 to all member states – why hold auctions at all for renewables that do not ask for subsidies?
7. In the case of interconnectors – is the intention to continue to build costly white elephants such as the Figueras – Perignan HVDC link (Euro700 million) vs double-circuit 400kV lines which cost 1/10th of the price.