Raul Gil, EVP Transmission speaks at Wind Europe’s annual event in Madrid to discuss the EU’s Industrial Accelerator Act, renewables in Europe and how the cable sector is investing in European industry.
“The European cable industry is the world leader and has been for 30 years, and this demonstrates from market forces that we are competitive - and even in a not fair playing field - we keep the leadership. We do not want to see what happens – and I don’t think this will happen – like in optical cables, where we were leaders and in 5 years it was overtaken. Or solar panels where Europe was the leader, and now it doesn’t exist. I don’t want to see IAA+ in five years trying to help the cable industry, I want to see something to avoid non-fair competition today.
The industrial accelerator is where things get ugly. At the last moment the grid, and cables, which were previously foreseen to be protected segments and who knows why – the dark side of the force - we were kicked out, and this for me is fundamentally wrong. And this means someone believes that the transition, electrification can be done without grids and that is fundamentally wrong.
We have already invested to not to be a bottle-neck on the grids and energy transition. What I am asking for is a level playing field, everyone playing with the same rules. I know we need to protect the environment and the landscape, but when I am forced to compete with other companies that don’t have constraints, that is not fair. And this is where we would the IAA to help us. I don't know whether through the IAA or another mechanism. I'm not asking for money for investments because we believe in the wind industry. The cable industry has invested four billion in the past last years – and more than that - not only in manufacturing. We are investing in ships, we're in R&D, we're investing in survey companies. We just invested in a survey company in Spain. And then this is creating jobs. Jobs of people who have a VW golf car, they pay the electricity bill and they are making the transmission system locally. And where is that on our bottom line? Nowhere.
I want to see preference in public procurement law. We play by European rules, we have employees in Europe, and we invest in Europe and we are Europe based. My proposal would give preference in procurement law. The IAA was the right tool for that, and now I fear we miss this. I hope the window is open for us. We want to invest, we don’t want to be a bottle neck and as we have demonstrated, we are competitive.”
“We have 2 sides in Europe: we don’t know when we can start investing due to the planning process, and 2 years for permitting and zoning. I don’t think our foreign competitors have these issues in their investments. In other areas where Prysmian is present and investing – we decide and in 3 months we start building.”
“Spain has done an excellent job, thanks to renewables. It is doing a great job with less inflation in prices, handling the Hormuz straight crisis.
Spain doesn’t have natural resources, and renewables is something that we can export.
Spain has a struggle in terms of interconnectors. EU has a 15% target, Spain has 3%. Spain’s electricity network during the blackout recovered thanks to interconnectors, and today we can’t export wind and solar when there is a surplus, and in bad days we can’t import. There is still a bottleneck on interconnectors.
Spain made a very good bet on renewables and created champions in Spain. The bet on renewables creates industry.
The budget on interconnectors needs to increase to exploit this opportunity”
