Greenpeace Action World Energy Saving Day

TO coincide with World Energy Saving Day on Saturday October 21, Greenpeace volunteers visited 13 Spanish towns to place stickers on the windows of the information offices of the country’s large electricity companies.

Offices targeted

Endesa, Iberdrola and Naturgy  offices were targeted in A Coruña, Palma de Mallorca, Girona, Pamplona, Almeria, Bilbao, Cadiz, Cordoba, Malaga, Granada, Murcia, Valladolid and Zaragoza.

The activists believe that the energy companies are deliberately making it difficult for individuals, especially those in apartment blocks, to install solar panels or other ways of collecting solar power.

Significant saving

Greenpeace argue that those who install solar power can save between 40 and 60 per cent on their annual electricity and with more than 10 per cent of households in Spain suffering from energy poverty due to escalating prices, this could mean the difference between enjoying heating or staying cold.

According to María Prado, head of Greenpeace’s Climate and Energy campaign, “we want to make it clear that these companies are preventing people from exercising their right to enjoy solar energy, making it difficult with bureaucratic obstacles to install solar panels in their homes.

“This situation, which should not exist since the repeal of the sun tax in 2018, occurs systematically in neighbourhood blocks and energy communities where self-consumption is shared between different people. This is the so-called collective self-consumption.”

Solar self-consumption

The charity believes that solar self-consumption is one of the best tools available to help families save on their electricity bill, be energy efficient and contribute to the fight against climate change.

However, according to the Greenpeace campaign, self-consumption in multi-family homes (tenant blocks) is not taking off because it is not profitable for large electricity companies, while solar self-consumption in individual homes has grown by 1,200 per cent in the last five years.