According to the Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain has been generating most of its electricity utilising carbon free sources of power.
The Spanish received almost 69 per cent of their electricity generation during March from certain types of technologies that are carbon free, and most of it came from renewable energy sources, where a small amount was also generated from their nuclear plants.
Nuclear plants generated 23.8 per cent of the total of the country’s electricity during March while 47 per cent came from alternative energy sources.
Wind power top alternative energy source
Most of the alternative energy utilised in Spain are from wind turbines, which provided 22.5 per cent of their electricity during April.
Wind energy competes directly with nuclear energy for the coveted title of being the country’s number one power generating source, where nuclear was number one during March.
Wind energy has overall provided more power to the country in its entirety of 2015. From January to March, the REE has stated that wind generated 23.7 per cent of power while nuclear came at a close second with 22.7 per cent.
Spain has always been at the forefront of renewable energy and has just become the very first country within the world to rely on wind as its top source of energy for a year.
Clean Technica says that the country wishes to supply 40 per cent of their power needed using wind power by 2020.
Spain is also trying to create other types of alternative energy sources in the field of solar PV power. Such power only accounts for around three per cent of the Spain’s power generation, even though it’s the largest solar industry on the world.
During 2012, Al Jazeera reported that solar made up almost 2, 000 megawatts of energy during the year in comparison to the U.S where 3, 313 megawatts of solar PV installations took place.
However, Spain still has a higher percentage of solar power per total power. The Institute for Energy Research stated that during 2013 solar made up 0.2 per cent of the net power produced within the U.S, while solar made up 3.1 per cent of Spain’s total power.
The country sure is making strides, but still facing challenges along the way. Spain’s very aggressive aims had been quite heavily subsidized by their government, however the government is now facing financial problems.
The New York Times has stated that during 2013, the Spanish tariff deficit had built up a cumulative debt of around $35 billion. Spain has since cut back on their subsidies, allowing for most of the costs to be put back on the power utilities themselves.
These cuts regarding the subsidies took place last year, and hence, alternative energy hasn’t really grown by a great margin since.
One part of of the country is still going strong though; the small island of El Hierro is almost at its goal of being 100 per cent powered by water and wind energy.
