The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread are extremely limited. If Spain was located near Germany and well interconnected, their prices would look like Germany's. And while cheap energy is pictured by op as a good thing, Spain understands very well that higher prices are good for its renewables industry, and is pressing for more interconnections[1].
The overall tone of the article feels like the author is here to extoll the virtues of renewables.
[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/8e94079c-585f-11e4-b331-00144feab...
But er, the bigger Algerian pipeline goes to Italy, a country with notoriously high energy prices. So if Algerian gas was the secret that's actually a big problem for you.
I don't live in Spain. And this is the first I have heard about their politics keeping tourists away. Can you elaborate?
Also, our economy is becoming more diversified, precisely thanks to lower energy prices that attract industries that previously gravitated towards Germany and Eastern Europe. [2]
I'm curious about how politics have hurt tourism industry, though, if you could elaborate.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/stellantis-chinas-leapmo...
Probably doesn't make a ton of difference. But I found that very respectable. It made me hopeful they have other basic green sensibilities.
As a red blooded American, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen all weekend.
[1] https://www.aftonbladet.se/minekonomi/a/Exwx4A/elprissmocka-...
The best candidate for lowering prices would be France, but France would most likely re-export that electricity to other countries, and paying to build up the internal grid to carry electricity that is neither bought by nor sold to French actors isn't very attractive.
Ideally Spain would interconnect with Italy, but that's more expensive.
The one question the article leaves open, but which is pretty relevant, is the question about who should pays for stability services to the grid.
Heck, oil is probably the "default" example of what a commodity is, but we're now all acutely aware of what happens when moving that oil from one place to another becomes exceedingly difficult.
It is not. As a case in my point, Spain had a blackout last year (and I completely believe they are competent professionals - the task is just hard).
> It's just that those interconnections haven't been built yet.
They haven't been built because the grid isn't just a technical problem. It's also a socioeconomic problem, and adding new interconnections would require finding who needs to pay for it ; and currently, that question has no answer.
If you want the commodities elsewhere, you have to provide for transportation. Same for electricity. Grids (or grid sections) where supply outpaces local demand and transmission to remote grids can hit negative spot prices even when neighboring grids haven't.
And for the numbers it seems obvious that renewables are a fundamental part of the picture.
Moral bankruptcy.
[1] https://cepa.org/article/spains-baffling-russian-gas-addicti...
[2] https://kyivindependent.com/spain-escorts-shadow-fleet-vesse...
YES THEY DID, they went as far as making nuclear power plants shut down due to negative prices so their reliable stable power wasn't a pacemaker anymore and it blew up in their faces. And this was a topic on TV shows with several experts alerting of this FOR MONTHS before the blackout.
Sure, there are new technologies to stabilize solar and wind's fluctuating outputs but they are no just plug and play. Those are very, very complex systems that take years to set up properly. While there are nuclear power plants are just there collecting dust because the EU pressured Spain to make them unprofitable to maintain so they would be shut down.
Luckily, the US-Israel-Iran war made the EU leadership turn and now they want nuclear. I hope it's not too late.
