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Spain Contemplates Taxing Renewable Energy
Green Technology Featured Articles
September 18, 2013

Spain Contemplates Taxing Renewable Energy

By Tammy Marie Rose
TMCnet Contributing Writer

Spain is strongly considering taxing renewable energy in an attempt to close its ever-growing deficit gap. If it moves ahead with the idea it will not only be targeting the big businesses, but also the little guys across the vast country.

Spain's debt has hit record-breaking proportions. Right now the country’s debt sits at 882 billion euros. Around 26 billion euros of that debt the country owes to power companies for its decade-long subsidization of selling electricity at less than cost to its customers.


Since 2007, just one year before its economic crisis began, Spain became a leader in the green energy movement. According to Smartplanet.com in 2007 the "Spanish government decided to invest in green energies by increasing the price it subsidized for solar energy to twelve times the price it subsidized conventional electricity, among other pro-green initiatives. Spanish energy giants Iberdrola, Endesa and Acciona worked furiously to infuse their grids with clean energy, and farmers, among others, jumped at the chance to take better advantage of their often arid and challenging terrain, by taking out loans to scatter their fields with the wind mills and solar panels you see across the Spanish countryside today."


Photo courtesy Shutterstock
By the beginning of 2012, Spain doubled its renewable energy output. The country was ranked third in global production of renewable energy. Spain became the poster child for success in the green energy movement.

This summer, the Spanish Ministry of Industry worked out a plan to aid in cutting off its subsidizing of green energy resources. This plan equaled out to about a 2.7 billion euro charge to utility companies as well as wind and solar farmers. This plan will cause a forty percent hike for Spain's energy consumers.

John Wolfendale, a Granada-based owner of Eco Vida International, told Smartplanet, “I just think the Spanish government is running out of options." Wolfendale said he had major concerns about the new laws' effects on his business.

According to Wolfendale, "People who are completely off-grid usually have no other option but to produce their own energy. For folks that are on-grid, they go green to be more energy efficient and to save money. Your electricity meter goes backwards basically in the Spanish summer sun, but then it goes up in winter."

The Ministry of Industry has written legislation for a support tariff. This tariff will charge people “that produce their own renewable energy, at a rate which the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) says is higher than those using conventional or gridded energy.”

The new tariff will deter residents that are connected to the urban grid from continuing to produce supplemental energy.

The bad side of this tax is it will make green energy not as appealing if it isn't saving people money, and in the end it hurts people working in the green energy field and the environment itself.




Edited by Rory J. Thompson


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