SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 28 Oct. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Members of the European Parliament and the Parliament of the Canary Islands agreed this Friday with island experts in the renewable energy sector on the need to increase the rate of implementation of clean energy in territories that have singularities such as the Canary Islands in terms of insularity and distance from the reference continent .
The participants in the forum ‘Solutions for the Canary Islands. Solutions for Europe’, organized by the Canary Coalition (CC) and the European Democratic Party (PDE), analyzed the development of the renewable energy sector in the Canary Islands as an “advanced example” in the EU and, especially, in the outermost regions.
The third work table of the conference ‘Solutions for the Canary Islands. Solutions for Europe’ featured the participation of Enrique Rodríguez de Azero, president of the Canarian Association of Renewable Energies (ACER), who underlined the “leadership” that the EU plays in setting the objectives in the international scenario of renewable energies, but he highlighted the need for “greater demand” within the community countries.
“We have made progress, but there is still a long way to go to improve at all levels associated with renewable energies. We have to be able not only to reduce the use of fossil fuels, but also to achieve their total disappearance to eradicate pollutants and also to reduce costs” explained Rodriguez de Azero.
And the Canary Islands, he said, “represent a place where this change can be made real as a unique space for Europe”, indicated the president of ACER.
Ciro Gutiérrez Ascanio, director of Sustainability at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, also addressed the need to continue raising awareness in society of the importance of “truly internalizing that we want to be a territory of the future in terms of clean energy and sustainability” .
From the two public universities in the Canary Islands, he said, “we want to offer a transversal vision of the sustainability that we need”, underlining that there is still some reluctance towards renewable energies and sustainable social values.
MORE CITIZEN CONVICTION
“Among the public, there is a lack of greater conviction of the path we want to take to improve our present and better project the future, but together we have to make it clear to everyone that we can no longer consume as we did fifty years ago,” he said.
A good example achieved in the Canary Islands with a projection towards the rest of the EU in terms of renewable energy is the Gorona del Viento project, made a reality on the island of El Hierro to achieve self-sufficiency with renewable energy.
One of its managers, Candelaria Sánchez, an expert in clean energy and attached to the Gorona del Viento maintenance department, explained the basic lines of the El Hierro project and encouraged its “unique achievement” as “a real solution for areas like our islands because we are island territories and, sometimes, very different”, and insisted that all the territories must “face challenges as current as energy sovereignty or self-consumption through clean means”.
The demands of the renewable energy sector in the Canary Islands were shared by the MEP Stéphane Bijoux, originally from the island of Reunion and by the Canarian deputy for El Hierro Narvay Quintero, collects a note from CC.
“Between all of us we have to be able to increase trust in the common project of the EU because that is the origin of specific work meetings, in this case on renewable energies, to generate trust between everything we share and also in future generations” , explained MEP Stéphane Bijoux, who addressed the clean energy scenario from the perspective of an island in the Pacific Ocean, but with a resounding belief in the European and pro-European vocation of the ORs’ societies.
Now, he said, “we see the impact of the war in Ukraine, of Putin’s aggression against a sovereign country, but that war against democracy is also a war against Europe and, of course, against our outermost territories.”
With the example of El Hierro, the nationalist deputy Narvay Quintero valued that the Canary Islands have advanced more than any other territory in the EU and shared with the MEP Bijoux that in the implementation of renewable energies, the ORs “have not waited for anyone” and thus have achieved, like El Hierro, to be better prepared for difficult situations such as the current one caused by the armed conflict after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
GORONA OF THE WIND
“I remember those first steps when we started talking about the Gorona del Viento project and now we can see with satisfaction all the way we have come,” said Narvay Quintero, to highlight the work carried out by the previous Government of the Canary Islands in matters of energy and sustainability.
“Today we are much more aware of the importance of energy and consumption in society, but in El Hierro and the Canary Islands we had already advanced before, so now we have to increase the rate of implementation and its efficiency in our society,” he commented. .
In the third panel of the international forum ‘Solutions for the Canary Islands. Solutions for Europe’ also participated Filipe Sousa, from the Juntos pelo Povo party on the island of Madeira.
As the outermost region of Portugal, the Madeiran politician acknowledged that his island “is not as advanced as the Canary Islands” in terms of renewable energies.
“We are small, a very small territory, but we have that shared goal of achieving a balance between our consumption levels and the generation of energy from clean and sustainable sources,” he said.
The forum opened in the morning shift by the secretary general of CC, Fernando Clavijo, and by the president of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Andoni Ortuzar, was closed by the Basque politician in recognition of the “extraordinary work that the Canary Islands have been carrying out in terms of renewable energy”, but also in effective systems to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and the generation of polluting waste.
In this sense, Ortuzar praised the shared work of the two public universities in the Canary Islands to advance in three areas that the leader of the PNV considers key: “facilities for young talent, scientific training for the good of society and more agile financing and more economical.
