The abstract concept of the energy transition, from the energy communities to the large industrial infrastructures, is one of the many forms of materialization that Arantxa Tapia has adopted with the Renewable Energy Sector Plan it intends to approve. This objective has led to alarms between different municipalities, administrative boards and citizens who presented hundreds of appeals against the initial approval of this plan in July.

What is the Sectoral Plan?

The document promoted by the Department for Economic Development, Sustainability and the Environment will serve to regulate regional planning in the field of renewable energy and has come with many controversies between citizens and the institutions to which they have been subjected. In fact, the document has classified the entire territory of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country for the construction of large-, medium- and small-scale renewable energy infrastructures.

Large-scale wind projects are 5 or more wind turbines with a production capacity of 30 MW or more. Those of medium or low scale are below these criteria.

As for PV projects, the large ones will occupy 10 hectares or more and generate 5 MW or more and the medium and small ones will not reach these barriers.

Therefore, the Department of Economic Development has divided the territory into different types of classification. The most important classifications or categories of possible immediate impact are the Selected Localisation Areas, where, as soon as the plan is approved, private companies can directly request licenses for the installation of energy infrastructures in those locations.

The Basque Government Department would therefore expropriate these areas and make them available to private interests for their management, deciding that they are projects of general interest. This will mean, in practice, the withdrawal of communal and private land, often linked to the primary or forestry sector, to its public or private owners for transfer to energy companies.

The plan has defined more than twenty such areas in Ayala and some are quite significant in the region, such as Ganekogorta and its surroundings, one of the lateral slopes of the Etxaurren Hermitage, the surroundings of the Ikastola Etxaurren towards Menagarai, Txibiarte or the campas located next to the Leto forest.

In any case, the plan classifies the whole territory according to its energy production capacity. Thus, these are Selected Localization Areas which, in the view of the Government, will be indispensable, but which have high, medium, low and very low capacity, and where if proposals are received for the implementation of the projects, the entity will decide whether or not to authorize them.

Projects not included in the plan

To illustrate the consequences of the above clause, it should be borne in mind that the Renewable Energy Sector Plan does not cover most of the existing wind projects in Ayala. The Aiaraldeko Mendia Bizirik platform has denounced: “What the Plan reflects is very hard, as it aims to locate numerous projects in ecological and cultural spaces of interest, but the most serious is not that, but what does not appear. In fact, the Larragorri or Ferosca I and II industrial wind infrastructure does not appear anywhere. This means that some projects that are being managed in parallel have not been collected to avoid conflicts.” While the wind project Aiaraldeko Mendia underlines the wind project Bizirik, it should be remembered that the plan does not mention the Ekiola project. The Provincial Council of Álava offered talks to explain it in Aiaraldea, with the objective of occupying over 3,000 square meters of Saratxo with photovoltaic plates.

Lack of transparency

In this sense, both Aiaraldeko Mendia Bizirik and some municipalities in the region have highlighted the lack of total transparency in the promotion of the Renewable Energy Sector Plan. In fact, its publication took place on 20 May in the Official Gazette of the Basque Country. That is, a week before the commencement of the municipal elections. It should be taken into account that the deadline for appeals was 45 working days, and that after the elections the municipal government teams were in office until 19 June, when the new mayors and councillors assumed responsibilities.

In the exercise of their functions, the Mayors and Councillors may deal only with matters of ordinary administration, without being able to adopt agreements which make the exercise of their functions conditional. Consequently, in the near medium term of resource submission, no one was able to draw up the Renewable Energy Sector Plan. Thus, the Aiaraldeko platform Mendia Bizirik and other institutions and agents requested the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and the Environment to extend the deadline, but the response was negative.

This lack of participation and transparency has been highlighted by many municipalities and agents. In fact, there are thousands of pages that make up the Renewable Energy Sector Plan and it is hardly possible to revise all documents and maps in 45 working days, or less for the above.
This reality was reflected in the attitude of the municipalities and agents of the region when presenting resources, but it did not prevent more than hundreds of resources from reaching the Basque Government from Ayala.

For example, Aiaraldeko Mendia led 117 popular allegations and 51 Bizirik techniques, as he opened a call for this among the citizens.

The complicated path of resources

Thus, municipalities and citizens were in different ports when preparing resources. Amurrio and Llodio, having sufficient means of their own, wrote their own without producing special noises, but this was not the case of Ayala, Arrankudiaga-Zollo and Orduña.

The municipal government team that entered Ayala on June 19, which would later be coalition, but only then EH Bildu, met the Renewable Energy Sector Plan and its particular situation. That is, most of the Chosen Localization Areas of the region are located in Ayala and occupy hundreds of hectares, sometimes in emblematic places.

In view of the fact that reality exceeded the technical capabilities of the city hall, an external consultant was hired and the meeting with all the Administrative Boards was convened to explain the details of the plan. Two projects emerged from this quote: The appeal submitted by the City of Ayala and those formulated by 22 local councils.

Arrankudiaga-Zollo, for its part, joined forces with the municipalities of Alonsotegi and Arrigorriaga against the wind turbines of more than a dozen that want to install on Ganekogorta. Among the three presented an 80-page document in the Basque Government, which highlighted the errors and shortcomings of the methodological bases of the Renewable Energy Sector Plan in various areas; procedures, cultural and natural elements, etc.

However, the most complicated situation occurred in Orduña. One citizen from Ayala informed another from Belandia that the Government plans to build a photovoltaic project there and at Mendeika. The news spread rapidly in the Larruazábal Assembly and shortly afterwards a meeting was convened in Belandia. In addition to the participation of representatives of the Bizkaia Administrative Boards and citizens, one of the newly incorporated councillors clarified that in the local entity they knew nothing about the projects before convening the meeting. The only ignorant of the projects that did not exist in the City Hall, as at the same meeting they realized that their land was in danger of expropriation.

Thus, the City of Orduña prepared the appeal and the Larruazabal Boards and 30 citizens also sent resources to the Basque Government.

Reasons for appeals

In the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country there have been thousands of resources against the Renewable Energy Sector Plan. Citizens have often had their starting point in their particular situation, that the right to rest has not been respected and that infrastructures have designed together with their homes an energy infrastructure, the requirement not to expropriate land linked to the primary sector, the protection of ecological cultural and/or heritage elements… The municipalities have also not discarded and recalled the places and ecosystems that must be protected within their limits and, for example, have remembered that they have not taken account of the fact that they have not
been able animals.

Other arguments are more methodological and question the criteria that the Department of Arantxa Tapia has used to designate the Selected Localization Areas. In this regard, asks the councillor of Aiaraldea Komunikabideak, Karmele Poblacion Aiara, who has been very critical of the situation they have found in their municipality: “Some of the selected areas are not particularly suitable for generating energy, so we do not understand why so many projects appear in Ayala. We suspect that they want to use the existing electricity substation in Murga to make it easier for companies to sell electricity, otherwise it is not possible to explain it."

In the vicinity of Murga the situation is not so new. On 4 April the Olabezar Administrative Board voted against the proposal made by the Basque Energy Agency and the Kean company. Both agents wanted to install a 15-hectare PV infrastructure on communal land and some citizens reported that they were threatened before voting: “They told us that, whether we like it or not, they’re going to put plates. They explained that we had two options: either that the plates were with us or that Iberdrola was going to expropriate the grounds.”

Contempt for participation

The thrust of the debate on the Renewable Energy Sector Plan is diverse and substantial. On the one hand, what energy model society wants to meet its needs, whether Community or industrial, to whom this model benefits, energy companies or citizens, and what criteria should be, both technical and localisation.

In any event, much of the concern caused by the plan is the result of lack of transparency and concealment. The technical resources highlight that the methodology of participation is questionable and that the contributions of citizens have not been included in the document. Moreover, the link it should contain is not available.

The worst thing, however, is that the plan itself has not covered the critical ideas contained in the participation process without valuing them at any time. In other words, only the plan has approved the opinions that coincide with it and the document itself states this: “The average assessment of the alternative proposed by the Government on the weight of agents is medium-high. The assessment of municipalities and municipal political groups is more critical. In this sense, it is important to note that most municipalities and groups belong to a concrete ideological line, opinions and contributions that, although valid, cannot be considered statistically valid”.

This paragraph may clearly note that the Department for Economic Development, Sustainability and the Environment is not satisfied with the opinions of municipalities. It may be because they are the closest entities to citizenship, because they do not or do not comply with the official views of the parties, but it is true that this Department has repeatedly met with local entities in carrying out their projects. Fracking was an example in Ayala and Corrugated Azpeitia was a very famous case at the time. In other words, Arantxa Tapia does not like the bottlenecks in town councils and the consequence has been evident.

When carrying out projects such as the Fracking or Corrugados Azpeitia in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Basque Government encountered barriers that it could not avoid, the General Plans of Municipal Urban Planning. Vitoria did not allow the exploitation of gas in its territory, while in Azpeitia the existence of workshops in the urban centre was prohibited.

So, in December 2021, PNV, PSE-EE and PP passed the so-called Tapia Law. According to this rule, projects which the Basque Government considers to be of higher public interest will not be subject to the PGOU. What was initially considered an exceptional measure will be established as an ordinary procedure through the Renewable Energy Sector Plan. Because the Basque Government wants all local authorities to adapt to what this document indicates, including the expropriation of private individuals, the land needed to deliver to companies.