According to this newspaper, the BOC published this week the refusal of the General Directorate of Energy of the Government of the Canary Islands, taking advantage of the report of Red Eléctrica Española (REE), to the dismantling of groups 5 and 6 of steam of the thermal power plant of Las Caletillas, which Endesa requested when considering that they are obsolete, that they do not comply with the European Directive and that, in addition, they have already completed their useful life, with 41 and 35 years respectively. Previously, the Government did approve the dismantling of groups 3 and 4, as well as one of the two chimneys of the plant.
Endesa does not understand the government’s position, which hides itself against the risk that the island system supposes not to have these two groups in the event of an “emergency” and is studying the possibility of appealing the resolution before the 20 days it has to do so. . The Ministry of Ecological Transition has not ruled on the causes of the refusal to withdraw two groups that the promoter himself considers “useless” even to start in an emergency.
In statements to DIARIO DE AVISOS, the mayor of Candelaria, Mari Brito pointed out that “we are betting that the Las Caletillas power plant, which generates energy with fossil fuel, is dismantled, but we have seen the dependence of the island’s energy system. this plant, although it is true that it produces a small percentage of the total, since it mostly depends on the Granadilla plant, but it is true that the system is not robust enough for us to stop depending on energy based on generation in fossil fuel”.
On the future of the plant, Brito pointed out that “the main problem is storage. Right now we do not have a system that can store energy if it were produced only by renewable sources. We hope that the application of the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law published on May 21, 2021, as well as the one that the Canary Islands will soon approve will allow us to advance in new models of environmental sustainability, as we have demanded ”.
Mari Brito hopes to meet shortly with those responsible for Red Eléctrica Española “to advance in the systems that can guarantee, above all, the supply, which is essential, and to evolve towards the generation of energy through renewable sources. It is a complex system, but there are projects on the table to advance in this regard ”, he declared.
