Miguel Afonso Caetano@remixtures@tldr.nettime.org
RT @jasonhickel
The story of solar energy development in Spain reveals something important about our current crisis and how to resolve it.
Spain has achieved a massive increase in solar capacity in recent years, outpacing the rest of the EU.
As a result, energy prices have dropped. The FT reports that, during some parts of the year, energy prices are negative.
This is great for citizens, and great for the planet, but bad for capitalist profits.
Remember, capital does not care about prices, it cares about profits. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, but they are not as profitable.
So, capitalists are slamming the brakes on new solar investments in Spain, potentially threatening the government's targets.
This is likely to happen elsewhere too. As long we leave the energy transition in the hands of capital, we are hostage to its logic.
There's an obvious solution to this problem: nationalization. Spain should create a national solar energy company and undertake the necessary development directly, totally irrespective of profits.
All countries should do this. This can enable much faster decarbonization, with less chaos and more stability.
https://www.ft.com/content/089487d5-dee0-4c38-b423-ce6802f1059d
Miguel Afonso Caetano@remixtures@tldr.nettime.org
Idiocrats' solution: Build more nuclear!! BOOM !! BOOOOOMMMM
"In 2023 and 2024, Spain added more solar power capacity than any other European country except Germany, whose economy is more than twice its size. Aggressive bidding between competitors in the M&A market drove prices for existing projects ever higher.
At some times in spring, as much as 60 per cent of Spain’s electricity comes from the sun. That has enabled Spain to slash its use of gas and coal-fired power stations. Consumers have reaped the rewards, as cheap electricity frees the country from the angst elsewhere in Europe over utility bills.
Sánchez calls his country a “global benchmark” in the transition to greener, carbon-free energy as Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent, bears the brunt of climate change. But the sunlit uplands of solar have begun to overheat.
Spain has built so much solar capacity that at certain times of day it produces far more electricity than it needs. Prices have plunged as a result, dragging down owners’ profits with them. Over the past year, “day ahead” wholesale electricity prices were zero or even negative 10 per cent of the time, according to data from grid operator Red Eléctrica. In May, they were at zero or below for one-third of the entire month.
Free power is gratifying for customers, but bad for generators. Some solar operators are told to shut down by Red Eléctrica to curb oversupply, via “curtailment” orders for which they are not always compensated.
The hit to profits has been compounded by another blow: the Iberian blackout in late April, which began in Spain and left 58mn people without power for at least five hours, and in many places for much longer.
The government has concluded that solar power did not cause the outage, but its prevalence in the energy mix is important context for what went wrong.
Investors and power companies said their doubts about the adequacy of the Spanish electricity system had been confirmed by the blackout."
