Green investment in Spain will account for 37% of the Economic Recovery Plan.

The Spanish Executive announces the mobilization of 140,000 million euros, following the European distribution agreement, of which more than a third will be allocated to green investment

Pedro Sánchez, President of the Government of Spain, presented on the morning of Wednesday, October 7, the so-called Economic Recovery Plan to tackle the economic and social consequences of the pandemic caused by COVID-19. This plan, which will have a major impact on Spanish green investment, comes as a result of negotiations between the various European governments within the institution in Brussels and plans to mobilize a total of €140 billion of public funds, which, in Sánchez’s words, could multiply “up to €500 billion of investment in the private sector” as a result of the driving effect of these investments.

Theinvestment plan, which will run from 2021 to 2026, will be based on four major pillars aimed at “the second major modernization of the Spanish economy,” as stated by the President of the Government. The ecological transition, digital transformation, gender equality, and social and territorial cohesion will be these four cross-cutting axes. Thus, 72 billion of these funds will be disbursed in the form of transfers (non-repayable) and the remainder will be disbursed through loans. All of this is aimed at “increasing the potential growth of the Spanish economy to over 2%.”

Following Sánchez’s announcement, and well into the afternoon, the four Vice Presidents of the Government (Carmen Calvo, Nadia Calviño, Pablo Iglesias and Teresa Ribera) detailed some of the main lines of this plan, among which the following will stand out, with 37% of the funds, green investment in the Spanish economy. Thus, electric mobility, the implementation of renewable energies, the rehabilitation of homes with a view to their energy efficiency and ecological recovery are established as the main destinations of this strategy. This commitment stems from the European agreement that gave rise to the Next Generation programme, which stipulated in black and white that the countries benefiting from these funds had to allocate this amount to projects related to climate change and the environment.

Some of the major figures speak of 250,000 electric vehicles circulating on Spanish roads by 2023, as well as the installation of 100,000 electric charging points to lay the foundations for this type of electric mobility. This will be linked to investment in renewables with the goal of climate neutrality by 2050 and the renovation and adaptation of half a million homes to ensure their energy efficiency.

The Green Deal and the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan as a backdrop

Green investment in Spain will be framed within the so-called Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan, presented last May and whose purpose is to establish strategies for the decarbonization of the Spanish economy by 2030. A plan that would be reinforced with this financial injection and whose flagship is the Green Deal, or European Green Deal, which aims to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

This plan sets the year 2030 as an “intermediate goal,” when Emissions will have to be reduced by at least 55% compared to the emissions measurements obtained in 1990 within the European Union. According to Sánchez, this goal could be brought forward to 2023 as a result of investments.