the online guide to the costa de la luz, andalucia, spain

Alternative Energies - catch the wind

Jenny Kean examines the options available as the province shows signs of moving towards a cleaner kind of energy

If you weren’t convinced before over the need to do something about climate change, then talking to Chiclana scientist Jesús Martínez Linares might help change your mind.

“Andalucía – and Cádiz in particular – are the areas of Europe that will be most affected by rising temperatures and sea levels,” he says. “By 2080, 70 per cent of people in Andalucía will suffer from allergies. And if that seems a long way off, let me tell you about the Aedes mosquito; it’s what gives you dengue fever, and it’s normally only found in tropical countries like Singapore and Brazil. But last year, it was discovered in the Doñana for the first time. The change is already happening.”

As one of the top 20 dirtiest countries in the world in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, Spain is trying to tackle the problem. And as Cádiz Energy Agency secretary Rafael Serrano Rodríguez points out, even if the environmental arguments don’t persuade, the economic ones do. “We have to reduce our dependence on oil. When the price of oil goes up, so does everything else. We have to make our economy more stable. So the first priority for the government of Spain – and of Andalucía – is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”
Spain currently imports nearly all its energy needs, so that’s a steep hill to climb.

But the authorities are responding to the challenge. The Junta de Andalucía recently issued ambitious new energy targets which state that by 2013, 18 per cent of the region’s primary energy (or 31.8 per cent of its electricity) should come from renewable energy sources. In 2005, the actual figure was just 5.2 per cent.

It’s no wonder, then, that windmills have been going up in the province like some kind of giant new crop. The first turbines appeared around Tarifa 25 years ago, and have since multiplied dramatically. But the past few months have seen them spread for the first time to the north west of the province – to Puerto Real, Jerez, Arcos de la Frontera and Medina Sidonia.  The landscape seems almost to have changed overnight.

With the new turbines, Cádiz now has a total of 31 wind farms – most of them in Tarifa. Another 12 are planned and according to the Consejería de Innovación, the wind farms will triple the current output from Cádiz to 1,391.07MW, or enough to feed more than a million homes. Almost all of the energy produced by the wind farms will be used in the province.

Cádiz has thus far gone almost exclusively down the wind route. In 2005, it had no solar installations feeding into the network, and no biomass production either. You only have to look at the old windmills perched on hillsides around the area to realise why this has been the case. “We’ve been experimenting with wind for many hundreds of years,” explains Isabel Rodríguez Fernández of the Cádiz Energy Agency, “whereas solar technology is still relatively new. Also, the unique geographical and climate conditions here make Cádiz the perfect place to harness the power of the wind.”

So perfect, in fact, that the seas off Trafalgar and Conil have been pinpointed as the possible location for Spain’s first offshore wind farms. When they emerged a few years ago, the proposals generated strong opposition from local councils, tourism businesses and fishing groups concerned about the effect on tuna migrations. The strength of feeling from the campaigners determined not to lose this latest Battle of Trafalgar forced the projects onto the back burner where they still remain, pending legislation from Madrid.

Windmills do have the support of environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Ecologistas en Acción. But the problem is, the wind has to be blowing for them to generate electricity – and many people just don’t like them. Their visual impact cannot be denied, and there are concerns about noise and the effect on migrating birds.

New rules state that a windmill cannot be erected within 500 metres of homes, and Isabel Rodríguez Fernández says today’s windmills are quieter and more efficient. “You can produce the same energy that 10 of the older style windmills produced, with just one of today’s models,” she says. “And the reality is that these windmills kill very few birds – the blades move much more slowly on the new models and more birds die as a result of high tension cables. And certainly more wildlife gets killed on our roads.”

But it doesn’t get away from the fact that these giants dominate the countryside. The latest ones are 78 metres high – the equivalent of a 20-storey building. Opposition has been most fierce along the coast and in particular round Vejer. So far, this area has escaped lightly, with just one older-style wind farm at Buenavista. But 10 more have been given the go-ahead by the Junta, many of them to go south of the N340 and close to the coast, although San Ambrosio and La Muela have been reprieved.

The new turbines still have to win approval from the local authorities, and Vejer mayor Antonio Jesús Verdú has pledged that they will not go ahead without a local consensus. The ayuntamiento has commissioned a study and local consultation, but Alejandro Manzorro Moreno of the protest group, Plataforma Vejer Futuro, is not complacent.

“Agriculture is no longer viable round here, so we have to depend on tourism now. What we have got is the beach and beautiful countryside. If we lose that, we lose everything. No-one wants to sit on holiday and look out at a windmill.”
He is keen to stress that the group is not against wind farms as such, but argues that they should not go along the coast but further inland instead. So how does he answer accusations of ‘not in my back yard’ or NIMBYism?  “The main selling point for tourism here is the coast, and that’s where the main interests lie. If you erect a windmill inland, perhaps one or two small-scale hotels might be affected. But here, it’s going to affect a lot more people and businesses. “Also, why go for windmills? We need to invest in other forms of clean energy, rather than just windmills.”

So what are the other options? Politically, nuclear power seems too much of a hot potato. Germany’s new coalition government might be wavering about the country’s commitment to closing down its nuclear plants, but Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero stands firm on his pledge to abandon nuclear power.

Biomass has yet to take off in Cádiz, although the Junta is hopeful that it could prove a boost to an ailing agricultural sector. Three biodiesel plants are planned at Los Barrios, San Roque and Jedula, and grants and incentives are available to help promote the use of residues from products like olives and almonds, which can be turned into energy. The Junta is also exploring the possibility of growing more ‘fuel’ crops such as sunflowers, palm oil and soya, although critics argue that this can drive up the price of these commodities as a food source.

What about other ways of generating energy from the sea? Great Britain is leading the way in tide and wave energy, but experts say the conditions there are different from here, with more open seas and therefore greater potential. It’s also difficult and expensive technology. Quite simply, it’s cheaper and easier to put up a windmill.

So apart from the wind and the sea, that leaves the province’s other great resource – the sun. With 3,400 hours of sun every year, Cádiz has some catching up to do in terms of translating that into energy. On its doorstep is a flagship project which within four year aims to produce enough electricity to feed the whole of Seville.

Situated at Sanlúcar la Mayor, just south west of Seville, the new solar thermal power plant looks like something from a sci-fi film, but actually the technology is relatively easy to grasp, involving the old schoolboy trick of reflecting sunlight off a mirror. Fields of hundreds of mirrors reflect the sun’s rays up to a receiver at the top of a solar tower 115 metres tall (around 80 storeys high). The receiver converts the solar energy into steam which is used to drive turbines and produce electricity. Visually, the effect is quite literally blinding, as the sun’s rays reflected in the mirrors light up dust and water vapour to create a kind of glow around the tower, which is owned by Abengoa Solucar.

These are exciting times for solar power, with technology moving on apace from the older style solar panels to the newer generation of photovoltaic ones that produce electricity rather than just heat. One man who is passionate about the possible benefits is Jesús Martínez Linares.

A scientist who was working abroad, he was persuaded back to his native Chiclana under a Junta programme to halt and reverse the brain drain of talented scientists. He was also handpicked by Al Gore as one of 200 experts in Spain to help pass on the message of his film on the threat posed by climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.

The solar projects being carried out by his foundation, Gea Solar, include roofing a whole estate of industrial units in Cádiz city’s Zona Franca with photovoltaic panels, and creating a huerta solar or solar farm in Chiclana which should be operational in 2008.

“Our aim is to make Chiclana a model for this kind of solar production,” he explains. “It is lower scale energy – if you have huge power stations, they make a big impact. We have to change the model, make everything more local and bring it closer to the point of consumption. Rather than having a central power station that feeds electricity out into a huge network, solar power can be much more localised.”

At the moment, renewable energies are subsidised and Jesús makes no apologies for that. By 2020, photovoltaic energy will operate in free market conditions, but until then, producers receive a higher rate than normal for the electricity they supply. “The Ley del Regimen Especial is absolutely crucial,” says Jesús, “because we in Europe have to show the way, to prove that this tariff incentive does work. We have to show that by 2020 our solar panels and our windmills are profitable – and then other countries will follow our lead.”

Jesús believes that solar is also the way forward for individuals, and especially for town and city dwellers. “You can capture the power of the sun on the roofs of our cities but you can’t put a windmill on top of every building. It’s also a sound economic investment. If you sell the electricity produced from your photovoltaic roof panels, you’ll receive five times more money than it costs you to buy the electricity you need. In ten years, you’ll have paid for the capital investment. People are doing this as a pension plan.”

In the UK, the government has just unveiled plans to have 7,000 offshore windmills servicing the entire needs of the UK population by 2020. Whether Cádiz goes down the route of wind or solar or a combination of both, a switch to some kind of cleaner energy is inevitable. And for Jesús, that’s an opportunity to be embraced.

“Renewable energy can be a source of wealth and employment,” he argues. “For every kilowatt, renewable energy provides five times more employment than conventional energy – and it’s more local. For Andalucía, our time has come. We missed out on both the first and second industrial revolutions; we can’t afford to lose the third.”