The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, said yesterday that one of the priorities of the Spanish Presidency of the EU will be to achieve “true energy sovereignty” by supporting “a more sustainable model based on renewables”.
During his intervention by videoconference in the debate European Energy Sovereignty: Spanish proposals, organized yesterday by the Alternativas Foundation, Albares recalled that there are just over “nine months” left for the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU and said, in this regard, that one of the priorities on the table is to achieve “true energy sovereignty”, reducing a “vulnerability” that the war in Ukraine has exposed in all its “rawness”.
According to the minister, both the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have highlighted “our dependence on the outside in certain areas”, which has helped to make the Member States aware, “if we want to be active abroad and do geopolitics”, of the need to “remain open to the world” but, at the same time, to “reduce our strategic dependencies”.
For this reason, Albares stressed the importance of the transition towards a “sustainable energy model” and towards a climate-neutral economy, which “will help Europe to reduce its dependence on such a strategic resource as fossil fuels and will set an example to other countries in the fight against climate change”.
“The Spanish Government is committed to this objective: we are convinced that the energy transformation to a more sustainable model based on renewables is the best strategy to ensure our autonomy and energy security, and that is why Spain is working to increase the Union’s climate ambition,” he declared.
He also warned that “only a true European energy market will make the transition to a model based on renewables possible”. For this reason, and in the midst of the “great pressures” faced by the European energy system due to the war, Albares highlighted the initiative of Spain and Portugal to create, last June, an Iberian mechanism to “limit” gas prices, which has made the electricity consumed in the Iberian Peninsula “cheaper” than that consumed in the “countries around us”.
These initiatives “allow us to face the winter with European gas reserves above the target set, but we cannot overlook the fact that the international context has changed, perhaps irreversibly”, he said. Therefore, he announced, the Spanish Presidency of the EU will focus on “promoting the debate on the electricity system and the energy model of the future”, and especially on the “energy transition and the climate agenda”, promoting agreements between Member States on issues such as “boosting green hydrogen, the development of renewable energy sources and investment in research and development to achieve the necessary technology to achieve climate neutrality”.
