More electrification and less renewables?
The Ministry of Industry presented this Tuesday a subsidy program to encourage energy efficiency in industrial sectors (600 million euros in aid) and promote electric cars (400 million euros in aid, via the Autoplus call). The objective is for reindustrialization to go hand in hand with energy transition. According to data from the last month, the sale of electrified vehicles in Spain accounted for 23% of the total. All subsidies, for both cars and companies, will be retroactive to January 1st. And to certify the aid for the decarbonization of industry, actions from the last three years can be taken into account. Measures like these are being carried out by all European states. No one wants to be left behind.
In Spain and across Europe, industrial electrification is advancing, as is the production of renewable energies. It is a strategic community requirement framed within the fight against climate change, but also in the context of China's strong progress in this dual area. And what is happening in Catalonia? Of course, it also aspires to position itself in this dynamic, but at the moment it is not succeeding. Neither previous nor the current governments are managing to break an immobile dynamic regarding renewable production.
The data for 2025 mark a setback that is difficult to digest. It is a serious anomaly. How can it be that Catalonia, a country with so much sun and wind, is not advancing in the production of photovoltaic and wind energy? Why is the hydraulic source – largely a result of Franco's dams – still the most productive when there is no drought? Why do we continue to be so dependent on aging nuclear power plants? Why in 2025 did we import more energy than we produced with renewables? At the European level, in renewable energies we are at the tail end, only ahead of the Czech Republic. The portion of demand met by electricity from renewables has gone here in one year – from 2024 to 2025 – from 16.2% to 15.3% of the total. In the European Union, renewables represent approximately 25% of total energy consumption.
And while this is happening, renewables are skyrocketing in neighboring territories like Aragon: 83% of the total generated. By 2030, the objectives set by the EU place the share of final consumption at 42.5%. The aspiration for 2050 is full carbon neutrality through an electricity system free of emissions and based mostly on clean sources. In Catalonia, we are very far from this. And instead of getting closer, we are moving away. Right now, it seems impossible to reach it. We should be acting with a sense of urgency, with concertation between productive sectors, energy companies, administration, and environmental groups. Why haven't complicities been woven between the four sectors?
The reality is that administrative difficulties, added to territorial opposition movements, often with an atypical alliance of the tourism sector, farmers, and local environmental movements, are hindering the implementation of wind and solar farms. The nimby philosophy (nimby) (not in my back yard, not in my backyard) is winning the battle. Catalonia is missing the renewable train.
