The President of the Government and leader of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, has advanced this Friday by presenting the electoral program of the party for the general elections that he trusts that the current third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, will follow in charge of that responsibility if they manage to repeat the legislature. The still president highly values the role that his minister has played in the European energy environment in the hardest moments of the energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine, above the bad relationship that this main Ministry has generated with the Spanish companies in the energy sector.
Teresa Ribera and the main companies in the sector have been constant in the last four years of the legislature, but the president of the Government and candidate to continue in office after the next elections publicly confirmed his minister in office to complete the Spanish strategy in terms of energy transition, one of the areas that are called upon to manage a significant part of the investments and the European economy in the medium term.
Sánchez has boasted of the strong increase in renewable energy that has taken place in Spain and has also announced a key measure so that the process of installing wind and photovoltaic farms does not stop: if he wins the elections, he will promote by law the entry of citizens in the capital and the benefits of projects of this type that affect their localities, with a reserved participation of 10% for those who want to invest.
The PSOE echoes with this measure one of the demands that the employers in the renewable energy sector were asking for, as a way of avoiding the tremendous social rejection that in some areas and a multitude of small municipalities in Spain suffer when it comes to install solar panels or windmills, despite complying with all environmental regulations and requirements. Given the high profitability of this type of project in areas less favored by agriculture, the opening of the ‘business’ to the inhabitants of the region can be a revulsion to unlock entrenched situations.
Along with this comprehensive measure in terms of Ecological Transition, and among many other initiatives (some of which are already underway), Sánchez announced the party’s intention to prohibit by law the privatization of water management in municipalities.
A sector in transformation
Beyond the promises made in the electoral campaign, the most important challenge in the sector at present that will have to be faced by the leader of the Government’s energy department after 23-J, is the reform that is taking place at the European level, in which the Iberian gas price cap that has been in place for almost a year in the Iberian Peninsula is losing steam as international gas prices are falling in the main markets.
On the other hand, the new Government will also have to deal with a more than foreseeable reorganization of the sector, with operations between large companies that are in the making at a European level and that may affect some of the Spanish companies, after which they have been warning for some time the industry itself.
In this context of operations between companies both within Spain and at the European level, the Spanish anti-opas regulations, recently renewed by the Executive, also come into play, which allows a public veto of certain investments in companies that are considered strategic for the sector in which they operate, and in the energetic, almost all the big ones are.
