Thursday, June 29, 2023
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The commitment to renewable energies is a necessity and an obligation not only for large cities, but also for small and medium-sized cities, since they share the goal of improving environmental practices and achieving greater energy independence.
Photo by Miriam A. Montesinos
The falling cost of renewable energy technologies and policies to promote clean energy have encouraged the idea among consumers that energy self-sufficiency is possible. Clearly, industries and large cities must rewrite their model in favor of a more sustainable one, but rural areas and small towns cannot remain on the sidelines and must look to green energy, both from an environmental standpoint and in the search for a more efficient way of life in terms of resource consumption.
Rural areas cover 84% of Spain's surface, so it is there where most of the renewable generation is being developed. This is a great opportunity to promote self-supply, and encourage employability that allows them to address one of Spain's most serious problems: the depopulation of rural areas.
According to data from the 2020 census, only 16% of the population is registered as living in rural municipalities. In this context, the commitment by small towns to green industry makes rural areas attractive destinations for people looking for a more responsible and sustainable lifestyle.
From product to resource: local energy communities
On the road to self-supply, energy communities are emerging, which enable renewable energy to be used in the same place it is produced, i.e., they use their own resources for individual or collective use. This model allows multiple activities to be carried out, from producing, consuming, storing, sharing, and even selling surplus energy.
An example of this is distributed generation, which is a system that generates electricity from a variety of small power points, but with these sources being located close to the place of consumption. In this way, greater energy independence can be achieved.
Energy communities are completely voluntary and open legal entities, where members, who may be individuals, SMEs, or local authorities, exercise effective control in order to provide energy benefits to the community, resulting in important environmental, economic or social goals for the members of the community or the town.
The various technical advances and the reduction of red tape and taxes are making it easier to produce sustainable energy on a small scale. An example of this was in 2022 when 2507 MW of new solar power capacity were installed in self-supply facilities, according to data from Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF), which is 108% more than in 2021 (1203 MW).
Local energy communities enable participants to use the energy they produce.
Among the environmental benefits of local energy communities, the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) highlighted their strengths in reducing energy consumption, promoting distributed renewable energy or minimizing the use of fossil fuels. And, going one step further, they are not overlooking the social benefits: creation of local employment and a community fabric and reinvesting the profits from the activity in priority areas for the community.
Do we in Spain have any examples of this? The answer is yes. The town of Castilfrío de la Sierra, Soria, with just 40 inhabitants, was the first rural energy community in Spain capable of producing and storing part of the energy it needs for self-supply.
The Hacendera Solar project is based on using solar energy for common services, reducing the demand for energy, lowering the carbon footprint and promoting energy savings of around 60% of energy bills. To do so, energy is captured through two solar photovoltaic plants installed on the roofs of the community center and the utility room. These plants supply electricity to various municipal buildings, a recharging point for electric vehicles, and all of the town's street lighting.
This is an example of how Spain is taking steps forward to promote the development and consolidation of Local Energy Communities, which now also has an aid package under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, under the section "Implementation and integration of renewable energies."
In short, energy communities are a new figure in the socioeconomic value chain of the energy sector that contributes to the energy transition and represents a new way of generating, using and managing energy at the local level thanks to the cooperation of different actors, such as citizens, local government and SMEs, contributing to the creation of a sustainable, decentralized, fair, efficient and collaborative energy system. A legal entity that, together with the rollout of larger renewable facilities, will be key to driving decarbonization.
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