There were few doubts, but in any case, last Monday, both the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Angel Victor Torresas well as the president of Red Eléctrica Española, Beatriz Corredor, confirmed that Güímar is the venue chosen for the future hydroelectric power station that Tenerife needs to store renewable energy, similar to what is already underway in Chira-Soria, in Gran Canaria. Its cost today would be around 800 million euros, to be borne by REE in charge of the system or another operator, and in any case its start-up would not occur before the year 2030.
“It will have and must be in the Güímar Valley,” the regional councilor for Ecological Transition, José Antonio Valbuena, confirmed to this newspaper, after stating that “in recent years we have analyzed up to 62 locations on the island of Tenerife, to find out the The best place to locate the storage of renewables and then also the cost and benefit, and that ideal point is Güímar, because it is close to the Las Caletillas substation and it is easy to connect to the grid and has the capacity to store the same megawatts than Chira-Soria, around 200 or 300 megawatts, producing energy for more than 16 hours, with 3,200 mg/hours”.
Valbuena stands out, not only the capacity to store more than a third of the energy that Tenerife consumes today, but also the environmental advantages for the area. “We are talking about an environment where the greatest environmental attack on the island has been committed, with the extraction of aggregates, some holes with considerable depths that would become large wetlands, with what that means for biodiversity, especially in birds , which does not exist today and a third effect that is direct, a drastic reduction in the greenhouse effect on the island of Tenerife”.
The counselor confirms that Minister Teresa Ribera has already been informed of the proposal for Güímar as the headquarters of the hydroelectric plant and that “what we want is for the approval to be accelerated, because if we want to guarantee the energy transition in Tenerife we need to store the renewables that now it cannot absorb the system and make the Canary Islands the first territory in Spain to decarbonize in the year 2040”.
Valbuena recalls that it is the State Government who is responsible for promoting and approving the execution of the work, guaranteeing that “once we have the approval of the Ministry, this council undertakes that in less than a year it will have all the environmental and administrative authorizations to to be able to start the work, as we did in the Chira waterfall”. Put this way, and given that Red Eléctrica also welcomes the project, the deadlines would begin to count, although it will not be an easy process, because there are cross reports from many administrations and it even has to go through Europe, so it is estimated that not before 2030, not only because of the administrative procedures but also because of the complexity of the work to be carried out in the ravines of Güímar, with pipes, waterproofing of the holes, which can take “between four and five years, impossible to do it in less time ”, says Valbuena.
Specifically, the two quarries that will be used to make the waterfall would be below, next to the TF-1, that of Los Guirres, today owned by the State when renouncing the inheritance of Fulgencio Díaz, his children and relatives, and above the quarry of Badajoz, owned by businessman Antonio Plasencia, about 100,000 square meters and about 70 meters deep, who was always in favor of using the holes as reservoirs, even when there was talk of a jump from Anocheza, and one of the few businessmen convicted in the Áridos case that presented a rehabilitation plan, in this case with a reservoir and an olive plantation, ruled out by the Provincial Court.
City Hall and NC
“We are pleased that Red Eléctrica states that the most probable location for the Tenerife hydroelectric power station is Güímar,” says the mayor of Güímar, Gustavo Pérez. “If it is carried out, it will allow us to have key energy storage for the future of the island. If the Güímar hydroelectric plant materializes, it will be an infrastructure worth many millions of euros, which would come to recover an environmentally damaged area and serve in parallel to cover the demand for water in agriculture”.
“It seems that all are positive aspects, but we request maximum respect and consensus with owners and farmers in the area in particular and with Güímar in general,” concludes the mayor.
On the other hand, from Nueva Canarias, its spokesperson in Tenerife, Valentín Correa, stresses that the principle of agreement shown by Red Eléctrica and the Government of the Canary Islands “will mean not only progress on our island towards the integration of renewable energies, but also the recovery of a space degraded by the illegal extraction of aggregates for several decades”. Valentín Correa added that the Güímar reversible pumping plant “will be an example of the use of our orographic and natural conditions to create clean energy,” he explained.
Valbuena: “The project is compatible with the court ruling in the Áridos case”
The project is subject to the judicial ruling in the Áridos case (January 2016), now appealed by the convicted and by the Güímar City Council before the Supreme Court, before what the Provincial Court determined as an “unenforceable sentence” when referring to reconverting the area degraded by aggregate quarries to its natural state. Valbuena points out in this regard that “in principle we would be recovering that environment to a better than natural state, since the restoration projects presented by the quarry owners were unfeasible from an environmental point of view. We understand that the plant project is completely compatible and it has been analyzed by our legal services. Once the resources are resolved, which should be available soon, we understand that we will be able to classify these lands as public utility and in a natural environment, with those holes already filled in and with a series of wetlands that would produce great wealth for the ecosystem of the Valley”.
He ruled out that the ARENAs are going to obtain economic revenue from the plant, because the land “will be public”, something to which they resist, being willing to revoke the sentence. In addition, the Güímar City Council also aspires to benefit from it. There was talk that he could receive three million euros a year, for 20 years, for the transfer of those lands, thus “charging” part of the 200 million euros that the four businessmen are obliged to pay by sentence, after not being their restoration plans approved.
