At the Seanergy forum in Nantes on Wednesday, the Balearic government's director general for energy and climate change, Pep Malagrava, restated the government's commitments to accelerating a "just and social" energy transition that helps mitigate the effects of climate change and to renewable offshore wind.
Malagrava said that the Spanish government has indicated that Minorca has particular potential for developing offshore wind as an energy resource. "Wind is an interesting solution for the islands and specifically for Minorca, which is connected to Mallorca by a bidirectional submarine cable. This allows Minorca to receive electricity and also send it to the rest of the islands."
Energy transition in the Balearics, he observed, "is the main engine for two of the greatest challenges of the current times". These are - "The fight to mitigate climate change and Europe's path towards a technological modernisation that will bring benefits and savings to the pockets of companies, public administrations and individuals."
He noted that the Balearics is an island system with difficulties of electrical connection. It is a region that is at the "epicentre of climate warming", but until 2019 produced only 2.7 per cent of electricity with renewable energy. Fifty-five per cent of electricity was produced with coal, but this is now just five per cent.
The islands face challenges because of population. There are 1.2 million people, and this population is forecast to increase to 1.4 million by 2035. "The population density of the archipelago is twice that of Spain." And there is an imbalance, as Mallorca has almost 90 per cent of the archipelago's population. "This causes very high seasonal consumption peaks."
Malagrava outlined provisions of Balearic energy legislation, by which targets are 35% renewables production by 2030 and 70% by 2050. To this end, there are 60 photovoltaic parks in the pipeline. Sixty million euros of public funds have been allocated as well as some 380 million euros of private investment in state-of-the-art photovoltaic installations.
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Couple of things need to be factored into the wind debate. The U.K. has a growing offshore wind generation sector and it can get seriously blowing in my part of the world believe me. That is not always the case in the Balearics and recently not here either this technology is not reliable. It is also ugly who wants to sit on a beautiful beach and look at those noisy monsters.