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"Seven proposals to the Government on electricity." Discussion

Foundation Energy Studies, linked to the UPM, has sent to the Ministry of Industry a proposed electrical model for Spain, divided into 7 key points, summarized can read here.

As one of the signatories was a professor of mine, and another was boss of mine, I can not resist commenting, except that addresses issues of primary concern to this blog.

I do not find anything to say that the English electric model is Kafkaesque. The successive "non-models" and ill-considered decisions of the different governments have led to a situation in which the energy industry pays a possibly more expensive than necessary (affecting its competitiveness), consumers are uninformed and poorly willing to take the "cost of being" involved in electrification, and companies face regulatory uncertainty unworthy of a developed country.

behaviors that have brought us this far, and promise to turn the situation into disastrous if you persist, I summarize as follows:

• regulation. Continuous change of approach, and often contradictory ways, which makes it very difficult to measure its investment companies. Take for example the policy of subsidies to subsidize the endemic mass installations of technologies that are at the beginning of their learning curve (solar photovoltaic or electric car at the moment) or without verifying that it meets the desired objective (CHP in the past), joins the continuous change and the regulation approach "based on ideas" (which is no stranger to the personality of the current Minister of Industry) or to meet political objectives of very short range, as the recent decree of coal. Let us add another bad English: the absence of regulatory bodies with sufficient influence, in this case, the CNE, which could have but is not allowed.
• making decisions based on ideology ... as the nuclear freeze in time, or the refusal to extend the lifetime of nuclear weapons against the technical reports ... or cronyism and power struggles such as Enel-Endesa case.
• economic problems not completely resolved or explained , as the costs of transition to competition in the past and the tariff deficit in this, that no government wants to tackle and you end up paying consumers.
• technical aspects need urgent reforms and the functioning of the electricity pool and the difficult relationship between the price of electricity and costs.
• ... and others I'm sure I left in the inkwell, and reflect on the whole a dramatic lack of long-term planning and clear objectives "country" that go beyond the 4 year term.

So, we go with the 7 proposals (which I hope you've read on the link above): comment which I think is really important, what falls into the "goodism" and some other major flaw ...

1 .- Planning mix. Very clear, perhaps most important to begin with. And anticipate problems, some already mentioned in this blog, for example, here.

2 .- Demand Management. They focus on flattening the ends, using storage systems such as pumping stations and electric vehicles. Crucial, especially the former, because the latter is more uncertain in the longer term. But the pumping stations, someone explain to me why this country is focused on building these plants, known and available technology, for all the country but mainly associated with wind farms, rather than throwing money at solar farms. Pumping stations More Now!
surprising, however, that no measures are talking about reducing their own demand (savings and efficiency), the short-medium term is the "energy source" that has more potential ...

3 .- Ensure sufficient electric power park firm, not subject to the vagaries of the present necessarily renewable. In three ways: storage by pumping stations (again), longer life and ease the nuclear potential future nuclear projects, and "capture technology" to coal plants. In this last one is where I think we fall into the goodism ... because the rule of capture technologies is preliminary, and storage of CO 2 (required subsequent step) do not say ... surprised a bet as clear a very uncertain technology. 4 .-

Renovables. assume that our plans for them involves the installation of adequate backup power, forward storage media (bombeo!!) And can still not be enough to handle the variability (and talk about it in this post ) . Therefore, we must increase international interconnection capacity.
One important point: not subsidize mass deployments!. Implement competitive-bid for renewable technologies and to subsidize R & D to reduce costs.

5 .- Energy Policy with a commitment to technology and support the R & D companies (not just public projects), particularly in these fields:
- Confining CO 2 . As I said before, is the emerging technology and uncertain.
- Energy Storage ... such as batteries for electric cars, one of the few points where they touch the issue of transportation is so important!.
- intelligent transport networks and distribution. And I know that power is moving on these issues. Public support for such projects seems much more cost effective than subsidies and photovoltaic electric car in which we live today.

6 .- Rethinking the design and operation of the electricity market and its regulation . Very necessary, as mentioned, but are played in this section are several points that I think are questionable: first, the group takes from the beginning that we must find lower costs of electricity, but advocates for including externalities the cost of fossil energy ... I wonder if these goals are reconcilable.
For Moreover, talk of " pay within the extension of life of the hydroelectric and nuclear to allow them to benefit businesses, consumers and taxpayers ." This is important because it is not clear how they say it, but we must make clear the sense that it must be said extensions plant life already paid, the costs of investment have been paid and guaranteed (CTC. .. ) by consumers, pose additional profits for power if the electricity is sold at the price of the pool. This is a misappropriation profits on consumer resource, and must be urgently corrected . The power must return some of this additional profits via tariff reductions, for example.

7 .- Distribution of objectives between the Ministries of Industry ( definition of energy policy ) and Science and Innovation (technological research into energy ). And above all, enhancing the CNE as an evaluator of the regulatory system and guarantee its enforcement.

In short, a proposal that plays almost all major points, but little new in fact, except for the proposed auction for renewable technologies, and surprised by the importance it attaches to the capture technologies CO 2, (in my opinion very optimistic) and little that speaks of saving measures and energy efficiency (in my opinion the best "alternative energy source" that have short to medium term .)