AFP, Madrid :
A former 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 told AFP.
He and his wife had invested a million euros ($1.1 million dollars) in 2007 in a solar energy farm in the northeastern region of Castile and Leon.
They borrowed 800,000 euros from a bank with Puebla’s parents acting as the loan guarantors.
A law passed under the Socialist government in power in 2007 lured solar investors like Puebla. 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 euros.
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.
The conservative Popular Party that swept to power at the end of 2011 made further cuts to the state aid.
“Everything that existed disappeared from one day to the other,” said Puebla.
He now relies on help from his sister and three brothers to pay his loan.
Solar power farms have seen their revenues drop 15-50 percent due to the change in government policy, said Jose Donoso, the head of Spain’s solar lobby group UNEF.
The solar power sector has shed 35,000 jobs since 2008 and now employs just 5,000 people, he added.
The government U-turn has been especially hard on the roughly 62,000 private investors like Puebla and it essentially stopped the solar power sector from expanding.
Spain added just 22 megawatts of photovoltaics capacity last year, compared with 2,270 megawatts in Britain.
Wind power has also stalled. The sector has lost half of its jobs in eight years and no new wind power capacity was added in 2015.
“The change in regulations since 2008 was negative for the entire industry,” said Carlos Garcia, a renewable energy specialist at the IE Business School in Madrid.
A former 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 told AFP.
He and his wife had invested a million euros ($1.1 million dollars) in 2007 in a solar energy farm in the northeastern region of Castile and Leon.
They borrowed 800,000 euros from a bank with Puebla’s parents acting as the loan guarantors.
A law passed under the Socialist government in power in 2007 lured solar investors like Puebla. 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 euros.
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.
The conservative Popular Party that swept to power at the end of 2011 made further cuts to the state aid.
“Everything that existed disappeared from one day to the other,” said Puebla.
He now relies on help from his sister and three brothers to pay his loan.
Solar power farms have seen their revenues drop 15-50 percent due to the change in government policy, said Jose Donoso, the head of Spain’s solar lobby group UNEF.
The solar power sector has shed 35,000 jobs since 2008 and now employs just 5,000 people, he added.
The government U-turn has been especially hard on the roughly 62,000 private investors like Puebla and it essentially stopped the solar power sector from expanding.
Spain added just 22 megawatts of photovoltaics capacity last year, compared with 2,270 megawatts in Britain.
Wind power has also stalled. The sector has lost half of its jobs in eight years and no new wind power capacity was added in 2015.
“The change in regulations since 2008 was negative for the entire industry,” said Carlos Garcia, a renewable energy specialist at the IE Business School in Madrid.
