James Warren
THE Ministry of Environment in Spain announced that it is to invest heavily in renewable energy projects with a cash injection.
The move will see a total of €181 million injected into several new, large scale projects across the country.
The state funded cash is part of a €316 million pot that has been reserved for renewable energy projects over the next five years.
It is also expected that the figure could be topped up by EU recovery funds in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The chosen projects will be focused around the use of renewable energy creation and will include solar, wind, biomass and hydrogen plants.
These new facilities will be dedicated to the worst hit agriculture and industrial sectors in a effort to boost employment rates.
The EU is also dedicated to using the funds to help use low-carbon energy to push the automotive and tourism sectors in an effort to level the economic damage caused by the coronavirus.
It is hoped that the EU’s commitment and Pedro Sanchez’s investment will encourage private investors to fork out €511 million in corporate funding to lead Spain to its target of carbon-neutrality by 2025.
According to early estimates by Sanchez, it is expected that the project will cost in the region of €200 billion to fully roll out.
However if successful, it plans to cut carbon emissions by a whopping 712,000 tonnes per year.
This year alone, €35 million has been pumped into the electric vehicle industry with Endesa installing 8,500 new charging points across Spain.
The government also announced that it would start the shut down of all of its coal fueled power stations, starting with seven in 2020, followed by a further 14 in the next three years.
