Iberdrola calls for stable legislation so as not to compromise future investment in clean energies
- The president of the company in Spain, Armando Martínez, asks the executive for more agility in the permits to build clean energy plants and stable legislation so as not to compromise investment.
The chairman of Iberdrola España, Armando Martínez, who participated today in the forum organised by the Europa Press agency and McKinsey & Company, defended stable legislation that does not compromise the strong investments planned in clean and renewable energies. "These are investments with returns over 15 or 20 years, which require stable regulatory frameworks".
In his opinion, it is necessary to be careful with the modification of legislative conditions due to specific issues, as is currently the case with the war in Ukraine, as "they can slow down investment capacity".
This is one of the two premises that he considers important, regulatory stability and the other issue, speeding up the approval of permits to build renewable plants. "Many companies make growth plans for renewable development, but there is a problem with permits. For facilities that take eight months to build, permits are delayed by two or three years," he said.
Armando Martínez is clear that, if the decarbonisation process is to be accelerated with the promotion of renewables, the administrations have to "speed up the permits".
The Chairman of Iberdrola España, who took part in the 'Generation of Opportunities' forum, said he was in favour of society making a firm commitment to renewable energies to accelerate the process of decarbonisation of the planet and energy self-sufficiency.
"It is becoming clearer and clearer that we have to see how we can accelerate self-sufficiency," he said, linking it to the war in Ukraine and the need for Europe to stop depending on Russian gas.
"The EU toolbox has to be maintained. Investment in renewables is the solution to the problem. For the chairman of Iberdrola España, the problem of energy prices "is the high price of gas". "We have to have more decentralised and cleaner energy.
Armando Martínez recalled how the company's chairman, Ignacio Galán, made a commitment to renewable energies more than 20 years ago. Since then, he said, Iberdrola has invested 150 billion euros in renewables, "which has allowed it to multiply its value by almost six times in this period of time".
He also insisted that the company has reduced its carbon footprint to almost half the industry average. This commitment to clean energy goes hand in hand with a social commitment: "For every permanent job created by Iberdrola, ten indirect jobs are created, bringing the total number of people working around the company worldwide to 400,000".