ENERGY revolution

The end of an era

In 2015, two things happened that can be considered the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. On the one hand, the Paris climate change summit and, on the other, the Volkswagen emissions scandal. With public awareness on the up, there is no slowing in the technological advances making it possible, for example, for the sharing of energy ownership between individuals in Germany and other European countries.

In Catalonia, however, this type of progress is just beginning. In some more advanced countries, the debate on renewable energy is already over. The discussion now is how to plug the gaps in the use of these energy sources, because in some places it is not always sunny or windy. “Although we are in a privileged situation, we are 15 years behind. We are still 92% dependent on energy from abroad, and very little of it comes from renewable sources,” says Farran.

For businessman Joan Vila, president of the PIMEC business association’s Energy Commission, “We are moving forward so slowly that we are barely moving at all, and if there is no disruption there will be no leap forward.” Vila believes it will take a lot to get out of the current comfort zone: “If things are going well no one will do their homework, no politician wants people to stop being comfortable.” The businessman says that solar energy is not being implemented because the sun tax has stopped it, “but at the same time, in Terres de l’Ebre they have made it clear that they do not want energy infrastructure, nor do the people in Empordà, and hydropower is at its limit.”

Changing mentalities

What is needed, says Vila, is a change of mentality. “Just substituting one type of energy for another won’t do anything. Barcelona will not stop experiencing congestion simply by substituting petrol cars for electric cars. What is needed is to promote the public transport system. And the same thing needs to happen in the other sectors of the economy,” he says. Farran also thinks that a change of paradigm is needed to introduce a new way of seeing things. “We are in the 21st century, but the entire energy model we have today was designed by people from the 19th century, such as Tesla, Edison, Ford, Graham Bell... And the problem is that the energy transition is being considered using the concepts of those 19th-century people,” she says. This way we could find ourselves with an apparently new model, but as it only involves a change of energy source; it forgets the social part of the equation.

“The great gurus of energy change are always the same and come from the past 200 years, which means they want to solve a problem based on the problem itself. And it is here where the break will take place,” says Farran, who does not favour the change being an “evolution” but rather a “revolution” in which the public play a leading role.

Democratising energy

Despite there being millions of power consumers, there are only a few producers, around a hundred, and they control the market. In recent years, however, things have happened that could change this dynamic, such as increasingly cheaper technology. For example, since 2010 the price of solar energy has dropped by 73% and wind power by 23%. “Before today, no individual could consider owning a nuclear power plant, oil rig or gas pipeline. Now, however, it is possible for 500 households to get together and get their own wind turbine. In the same way that we are living through a political transition, we are also living through an energy transition,” says the head of ICAEN, who is convinced that the 21st century will be the century of electricity and renewable energy sources because: “To be honest, I do not see robots giving off smoke.”

The president of the Cluster for the Energy Efficiency of Catalonia, Xavier Farriols, also points to the public as the driving force of this transition. “The change,” says Farriols, “has to come from the bottom up. But for consumers to take action, they need the tools to do so. The consumer, who is at the centre of the electrical system, as defined by the European Commission, needs hints about the market and instruments to incentivise the adoption of this new role. That is why we propose more market flexibility and more capacity for public management.” The world of energy now has a new term to define these consumer/producers: the prosumers (proactive consumers).

A vision for a country

Right now, the renewable energy used in Catalonia does not reach even 10% of the total, whether produced here or abroad. The aim of the climate change law – which the State government has challenged in the Constitutional Court – is to reach 50% of the total by 2030, and 100% by 2050. It is a higher percentage than the one set by the Council of the European Union, which recently lowered the 35% target proposed by the European Parliament to 32%. While it is an extremely ambitious target, it is not entirely impossible.

“We have a lot of work to do to catch up, it is a mission for the government, a mission for the country. One of the most important things that has to be done in this political term is a law of urgent measures to implement solar and wind power within a distributive and participative model. We are not talking about making huge parks of 300 megawatts, we are talking about all towns and citizens getting involved,” says Farran.

The institute head also points out that oil, coal, gas, even uranium, all need to be dug out of the earth. “We are very much aware that we can no longer look downwards, we have to look up. Yet we still haven’t done so, and if we look at the regulations on urban planning, energy, construction… we see that the sun is not taken into account anywhere as a possible energy source,” she says.

This is why a change in the law is so important, as is convincing all parts of society to commit to the process. Farran argues for making the rural world understand that implementing renewable energies can be economically worthwhile, and she also points out that cities have to accept their role as large energy consumers. “Cities cannot say that they use renewable energy without being concerned about where it comes from. The local authorities have to make sure that they buy power that is produced close by. Why not make an agreement to buy energy produced in a nearby county for the next 15 years? Such a guarantee would mean that local production could go ahead without any problems, while also escaping the game played by the State authorities, who change the rules whenever it suits them,” she says.

This is not a new practice and, in fact, is done by large companies, such as Google and Amazon, who buy energy in advance from energy parks that do not yet exist, while helping to fund them.

The aggregators

While the public in general is becoming more aware that the future is renewable, in Catalonia steps are being taken to go even further. Three Catalan companies: Bassols Energia, Estabanell Energia and Factor Energia, as well as one from Malaga, Olivo Energy, have reached an agreement to create Entra (Energy Transition) an energy demand aggregator.

This is something that has still not been regulated in Spain, but has proved to be a success in countries like the United Kingdom and Denmark. Aggregators act as intermediaries to which individuals or companies hand over the management of their energy consumption or production, allowing demand to be managed in a more flexible and interconnected way.

Let’s imagine an aggregator that manages the energy of a thousand households and some companies. Thanks to new technology and the digitalisation of services, the aggregator can lower the thermostat in a house by a degree if it knows that the price of power is higher or it can suggest a time for using the washing machine and take advantage of that energy saved to cover the sudden demand of another client. Thus, things are managed more efficiently and the flow of power is maintained, as this allows more room for manoeuvre: it will look for energy wherever it might find it, whether that produced by a neighbour’s solar panel or that stored in the batteries of a company’s electric vehicles that are not being used. In short, it manages demand in terms of supply. “There are millions of us consumers, it’s true, but we are invisible. However, when we come together we stop being so,” points out Farran.

New businesses

The launch of Entra, which is a pioneer project in Spain, is not the only indicator that the panorama is changing, and a new business model can be perceived. Webatt, for example, is a new Catalan company that installs smart electric batteries for domestic use, while Innover, also Catalan, promotes the self-supply of power and has joined up with the German firm Solarwatt to promote the use of batteries, then Holaluz has signed an agreement with Tesla... It is clear that finding a solution for storing energy will bring about a radical transformation.

For one moment, let’s just imagine, for example, that we can generate our own power, which we can then store at home, sell, share, exchange... All of that is now technically possible, but what is needed is for us to accept this and for the authorities to make these things easier to do. “When we talk about building a country we think about the infrastructure of airports, roads... but we do not think about energy. And that’s a shame, especially because we could build a winning country, because the energy source par excellence is the sun. And we have sun, lots of sun,” Farran concludes.