Could Spain become Europe’s Energy Hub?

this video is brought to you by nebula since Putin's invasion of Ukraine one of the main things on the eu's agenda has been energy despite usually playing a somewhat understated role in the EU in the last few years Spain which just took on the EU council's rotating presidency has emerged as a sort of energy powerhouse on the continent with a strong economy massive renewable potential and good access to gas from Africa so in this video we're going to have a look at how Spain's Energy Mix is changing the current government's policies and how Spain could become Europe's energy hub foreign before we start if you haven't already please consider subscribing and ringing the bell to stay in the loop and be notified when we release new videos so let's start with Spain's economy for most of recent history or at least since 2008 Spain's economy has been in a bit of a rut however in the past few years Spain's economy has fared conspicuously well Spain has one of the lowest inflation rates in the EU with year-on-year inflation now within the ecb's two percent Target and GDP grew by an impressive five and a half percent last year while that's expected to slow somewhat over the next couple of years last month the IMF upgraded its growth forecast for 2023 from one and a half percent to two and a half percent almost three times the Eurozone average of 0.9 the point we're making here is that while Spain's rickety economy might have ruled it out a couple of years ago its current economic strength suggests that Spain is well placed to play a crucial role in Europe's energy transition the second reason Spain is going to be important to Europe's Energy Mix in the future is gas the EU has spent the past 18 months looking for new sources to replace Russia's natural gas and one of the places they're looking is Africa which has massive untapped natural gas reserves one idea on the table is the trans-saharin pipeline which would run up from Nigeria Niger Algeria and enter the EU via Spain and Italy even if this specific pipeline doesn't happen Spain's proximity to Africa suggests that it's well placed to become an important gas Transit State for the rest of Europe Spain has renewable potential for well really quite obvious reasons it's very sunny quite windy and has lots of empty land which means there's a lot of potential for solar and wind projects Spain has some of the best solar potential in not just Europe but the world largely thanks to the fact that the south is almost constantly sunny today Spain has the second most solar capacity in the EU after Germany but it has plans to literally double its capacity in the coming years at the end of 2022 Spain had about 27 gigawatts of solar capacity installed compared to 69 gigawatts in Germany 25 in Italy and 16 in France last year solar accounted for about 12 of all of Spain's electricity generation and Spain added nearly eight gigawatts of new solar roughly as much as Germany and about triple that of Italy and France on top of that the Spanish government has already approved another 25 gigawatts of solar projects mostly in the center of the country around Madrid which are due to be completed before June 2025. this would essentially double Spain's solar capacity and the government expects to add yet another 25 gigawatts or so by 2030. according to its 2023 National energy and climate plan the same plan also aims to double Spain's wind capacity by 2030. while solar is expected to make up the largest fraction of Spain's total energy mix Spain is still a European leader in Wind Spain currently has about 28 megawatts of wind power installed more than any other EU country except Germany on top of all of this Spain also has pretty good hydropower with most of its big hydroelectric dams in the north where the terrain is more mountainous according to the international hydropower Association Spain has 20 gigawatts of hydropower capacity the fourth most capacity in the EU after France Italy and Norway unfortunately for the Spaniards Spain's hydropower capacity has essentially stagnated because well Spain has had a domestic hydropower industry for decades now and they've built all the obvious dams nonetheless this base of hydropower is great news for Spain when it comes to the energy transition because the Spanish government plans on using it as a sort of Base load energy source essentially wind and solar are great but they're intermittent they only work when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing but people want energy all the time and especially when it's dark to guarantee that people can have energy on demand you either need loads of energy storage I.E batteries which are very expensive or you need a reliable source of energy that can be turned on and off like hydropower or nuclear there's actually a bit of a dispute going on over this in Spain at the moment the People's Party want to keep Spain's nuclear reactors which currently account for between 15 and 20 percent of all of Spain's electricity generation but Pedro Sanchez's Socialist Party wants to phase them out by 2035 and have Renewables account for over 80 percent of generation anyway you get the idea Spain is already one of Europe's leading players when it comes to Renewables and the current government wants to dramatically increase capacity in part because Renewables are intermittent which means you'll sometimes have more energy than the grid can handle Spain wants to use this excess energy to become Europe's leading green hydrogen producer we obviously don't have time to explain everything you need to know about hydrogen but the basic idea is that hydrogen is a clean energy dense fuel which is expected to partly replace fossil fuels in the future unfortunately for the planet hydrogen is produced via an energy intensive process called electrolysis which means that often hydrogen can be just as bad for the planet as fossil fuels if the energy used in electrolysis is created by burning hydrocarbons green hydrogen is hydrogen where this energy is generated by Renewables and this is what Spain wants to become a world leader in this is why Spain and France are currently working on a new pipeline dubbed H2 Med that will send green hydrogen from Catalonia to Southern France and then onto the rest of Europe now there are risks here solar for example can be a bit of a boom in bust industry as Spain found out in the 2010s when the government cut subsidies and China flooded the market with super cheap components it's also worth saying that no one knows whether green hydrogen will really be the future in the way its proponents claim and unless Spain invests in better grid connectors with France it'll struggle to handle the excess energy generated by Renewables nonetheless Spain clearly has the potential here to become a sort of European energy superpower Not only would this have massive economic implications but it would also change the balance of power in the EU given how much more important energy and energy security has become in recent years if you enjoyed diving deep into topics like this if you're the kind of person who wants the even smarter and more analytical side of these stories then you'll really enjoy our new series The Daily discussion where we cover a number of other important topics from the endless coups in the Sahel region the Twitter Rebrand or the specifics of the war in Ukraine the tldr writing team hosts these daily discussions most days diving deeper into a new story we write about and unpacking the hidden details that they found fascinating but that were either too long or too academic to make it into the final script if you want to check this series out you can find the episodes exclusively on nebula the best news is that nebula is less than two pounds a month and provides you with ad-free and exclusive videos from tldr and a ton of incredible content from other creators like Johnny Harris real life law and and legal eagle check it out by 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Channel: TLDR News EU

Views: 284,859

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Id: ZQ0H7JvDIjg

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2023