Joan Groizard, Secretary of State for Energy, at Esade: “Renewables are an insurance policy against uncertainty and energy crises”
Spain’s Secretary of State for Energy, Joan Groizard, has championed the role of renewable energy and self-consumption in improving Spain’s and Europe’s competitiveness and reducing their energy dependence. He made these remarks on Wednesday at an event organised by the EsadeGeo Centre for Global Economy and Geopolitics, in collaboration with Amazon, at Esade’s Madrid campus to discuss the decisions needed to advance industrial decarbonisation.
“Renewables can be seen as an insurance policy against uncertainty and energy crises,” Groizard said, referring to the recent rise in fossil fuel prices following the Strait of Hormuz crisis. The Secretary of State also stressed the need to make better use of existing electricity grids and ensure efficient, effective connections.
For her part, Beatriz Yordi, Director for Energy Security and International Relations at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy, placed energy at the heart of European sovereignty: “It is geopolitics, it is security, it is our ability to lead—or not—in an increasingly competitive world.”
Yordi insisted that the European Union must ensure access to clean, affordable energy that strengthens its competitiveness and strategic independence, warning that “dependence on fossil fuels is an economic trap for Europe”. Among the remaining challenges, she highlighted clean electrification across all sectors of the economy, the development of stronger, smarter electricity grids, and the large-scale deployment of storage capacity and flexibility.
Self-consumption as a strategic opportunity for Europe
The event, which opened with a welcome from Mario Lara, Director of Esade Madrid, featured a presentation of the key findings of the study “Industrial self-consumption as a driver of strategic autonomy, climate neutrality and electrification”. Produced with support from Amazon, the report sets out proposals for action to promote industrial self-consumption in the European Union.
In this context, Groizard highlighted that self-consumption helps deliver more competitive prices both for the companies that adopt it and for consumers as a whole by increasing photovoltaic generation capacity. He also emphasised its contribution to predictable energy costs: “A factory that generates part of its electricity through self-consumption is not only more competitive; it also knows how much its energy will cost for the rest of that infrastructure’s useful life.” He further stressed its fundamental role in the energy transformation and the electrification of other sectors.
Ruth Díaz, Country Manager for Amazon in Spain and Portugal and Vice President of Amazon Fashion Europe, highlighted the company’s progress towards meeting its commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions before 2040. She highlighted projects such as the solar installations for self-consumption at its fulfilment centres in Seville and Illescas (Toledo), as well as Amazon’s first wind turbine for self-consumption anywhere in the world, currently under construction in Girona.
Díaz called for the active involvement of regional and local governments in the energy transformation. She also urged them to “reduce the administrative burdens that are currently slowing down” these initiatives and to provide “a regulatory framework that promotes innovation rather than hindering it”.
The event concluded with a debate on the challenges facing Europe’s energy transition, moderated by Helena Arronis, Senior Fellow at EsadeGeo. Participants included Nicolás González Casares, Member of the European Parliament and of its Committee on Industry, Research and Energy; Juan Diego Requena, Executive Secretary for Energy of the People’s Party; Cristina Aparicio, Director-General for Energy Transition and the Circular Economy of the Community of Madrid; and Miriam Bueno Lorenzo, Adviser at the Spanish Climate Change Office of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge.