Thursday, March 26, 2026

The Energy Transition, back to Common Sense

Global Warming as a Dogma of Faith

In 2022, the High Court of Justice of Extremadura forced Iberdrola to dismantle a solar photovoltaic (solar PV) plant and return the 500 hectares of land to its legitimate owner after it had been obtained through forced expropriation (https://www.eleconomista.es/energia/noticias/11820266/06/22/Una-sentencia-obliga-a-Iberdrola-a-desmantelar-la-planta-fotovoltaica-mas-grande-de-Europa-.html). In November of this year, the Regional Government of Andalusia began the forced expropriation of approximately 80 hectares of olive groves in several towns in the provinces of Córdoba and Jaén (Spain), despite opposition from owners and neighbours, to transfer them to a renewable energy development firm to build a solar PV plant (https://www.jaenhoy.es/jaen/inician-expropiacion-forzosa-100000-olivos-jaen-megaplantas-solares_0_2002746975.html). Development firm and regional government are utilizing a legal loophole in Article 54 of the Electricity Sector Law (Law 24/2013), which allows forced expropriation for "general interest" of land used for electrical installations. However, it is understood that land expropriated under this law, which dates back to a time before private developers even existed, should pass to public ownership; a Supreme Court ruling is currently awaited to confirm the law's original purpose.

These are just two examples of forced land expropriations for renewable energy facilities where public administrations use the excuse of a supposed general interest. Yet, this interest is relative, because the primary beneficiary is a private company using the installation for its own profit, and Spain has vast amounts of other available land. Ethics are notably absent when projects are developed without the owner's consent or knowledge and without offering a fair economic agreement.

In the Netherlands, a similar situation is occurring with wind energy, with advanced plans to turn the entire North Sea into a massive wind farm. This is deemed feasible due to year-round wind and shallow depths, despite the considerable ecological damage construction and operation of the plant will cause. Harmful effects are expected to be mitigated through further analysis (https://www.noordzee.nl/stichting-de-noordzee-presenteert-nieuw-rapport-over-internationale-ecologische-monitoring-van-windparken/), but there is no intention to halt deployment even if results are negative, as these installations are considered essential to curb global warming.


Figure 1: Wind farm in the North Sea.

These excesses are the result of an excessive fanaticism regarding the energy transition, stemming from a generalized fear of climate change or global warming, two terms often used interchangeably despite having different meanings. It was only a matter of time before a strong social and political opposition emerged, as seen in the Netherlands, where conditions for developing solar energy on agricultural land were tightened in 2023, effectively resulting in a ban. There is growing popular opposition to using agricultural land for anything else than farming or livestock breeding, which is reflected in recent election results where the "extreme right" is increasingly gaining support. These political parties across Europe share a skeptical attitude toward climate policies, including the energy transition.

It is discouraging to see how dogmatism has taken over the debate, with global warming as the only argument in favour or against. Supporters, who base their views on the IPCC climate report (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/), regard CO2 reduction as fundamental, while opponents, united in the Clintel Foundation (https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/), argue that while the Earth may be warming, it cannot be proven it is caused by human activity, making the energy transition unnecessary or even counterproductive.

In this "debate among the deaf," three extremely relevant arguments are ignored that should carry more weight in public debate:
  1. The stabilization of energy prices.
  2. Energy independence.
  3. The reindustrialization of Europe.
These objectives are essential for maintaining freedom and prosperity in Europe in the current geopolitical turmoil.

The stabilization of energy prices

Unlike fossil fuels, which are subject to price fluctuations, renewable energies have a surprising ability to stabilize prices, once they can be stored! This was demonstrated in previous articles of mine regarding competitive renewable energy. For a latest reference see https://elperiodicodelaenergia.com/almacenamiento-salvando-el-sector-fotovoltaico (in Spanish). Renewable plants (solar PV, CSP, wind) have almost no variable costs because their "fuel" (sun or wind) is free. This fixed cost structure inevitably generates fixed final product prices.

However, storing renewable energy has been expensive and its application at large commercial scale has hardly begun. Consequently, renewable energy still has to be used as it is generated, which creates management problems, as the source usually is not available when it is most needed, causing grid issues and price collapses, like on April 28th 2025 in Spain and Portugal when (most likely) an excess of solar PV energy caused a general blackout that took more than 24 to restore (https://www.entsoe.eu/publications/blackout/28-april-2025-iberian-blackout/). These management problems stop once energy can be stored commercially. Solar or wind energy generated during low demand can be stored and sold when demand is high, stabilizing prices. Stable prices are a blessing for consumers and essential for industry if Europe wants to take its reindustrialization seriously.

Figure 2: Wind and solar PV farm with storage.

Energy Independence

The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and recent Middle East tensions are showing cruelly Europe's dependence on third powers for essential goods and energy. We have not forgotten the high natural gas prices in 2022 due to sanctions against Russia, Europe’s main supplier (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=600472). Natural gas prices never fully recovered to pre-sanction levels.

These supply issues caused a German electricity price explosion nearly reaching 1,000 €/MWh on December 12th 2024, with mean prices around 300 €/MWh (https://www.energy-charts.info/?l=en&c=EU).

Such dependence is unacceptable; to stop relying on powers like Russia or the Gulf States, Europe must generate its own energy. While Europe lacks significant domestic fossil fuels beyond coal and some North Sea gas and oil, there are large thorium deposits in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Greenland. In this landscape of scarcity, renewable generation becomes especially important.

The Reindustrialization of Europe

An energy transition supported by strong R&D can accelerate Europe's reindustrialization not only by generating our own energy but also inventing and manufacturing the necessary components. A photovoltaic module, for example, involves high-tech cells made from materials like copper, silver, and indium, assembled on polysilicon wafers cut with diamond wire or lasers. These wafers come from ingots produced in high-precision furnaces, a technological feat in itself, starting from silica sand through a sophisticated chemical process.


Figure 3: Modern solar PV cell manufacturing plant.

Wind turbines, transformers, electrolyzers, heliostats, and other renewable energy components have equally complex and technologically challenging value chains. For cost reasons, they are currently manufactured mostly outside of Europe. For them to be manufactured in Europe again, conditions similar to those existing in major manufacturing countries outside of Europe are needed.

Traditionally, this was achieved either by lowering production costs here, or by raising costs for our competitors there. The former is not possible for obvious reasons, so the European Commission is currently opting to raise costs for competitors through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which imposes quotas on imported carbon-intensive products, while simultaneously requiring European industry to produce without CO2 emissions.

However, this mechanism focuses unilaterally on the hypothetical CO2 emissions in the production chain of imported products, even though CO2 is not the primary reason for the lower costs, not to mention unfair competition, in competing countries. What does explain the considerably lower costs in such countries is the disregard for the environment and labor rights. For Europe to be competitive and not overly dependent on imports, we must demand that supplier countries treat the environment and labor rights with at least the same respect as we do here in Europe. This could be achieved through the implementation of a so-called European Environmental and Social Certification, as I explain in detail in another article in Euro-Industria: https://euro-industria.blogspot.com/2024/01/towards-european-social-environmental.html.

Great Social and Political Consensus

Price stability, independence, and reindustrialization should be enough reasons for all parties across the political spectrum in any European country to be enthousiastically in favour of the energy transition. By stripping the transition of leftist dogmatism and right-wing rejection, a broad consensus based on rational criteria could be established. Moving away from climate dogmatism gains us two valuable things: time and our own fossil fuels.

Time

Research and Development

Without climate as the sole factor, there is no need to rush the transition by 2030 or 2050. Instead of desperately installing and spending billions of euros on solar and wind farms just to slightly lower temperatures, valuable resources can be dedicated to R&D and there is still much to explore.

Storage

In all the panic and haste, we forgot an essential element for renewable energies to perform their stabilizing role in energy markets: storage. With so much wind and solar power connected, we suddenly realized that power grids can no longer absorb even the slightest kilowatt-hour extra at times when it is least needed. Despite continous price falls storage remains expensive and requires large quantities of critical materials that Europe either lacks or cannot manufacture. The most notable examples are lithium (Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina) and coltan (Democratic Republic of Congo). Furthermore, lithium batteries are typically short-term storage batteries (24 hours), which are perfect for solar PV installations with their predictable daily production curves on the rhythm of the Sun, but do not address the challenge of storing energy for much longer periods, i.e., weeks or months.

Nevertheless, there are some promising technologies:



















Figure 4: Pumped hydro power plant (Muela de Cortes de Pallás, Spain); note the difference in height between the two reservoirs.

Increased Efficiency

The efficiency of photovoltaic cells, which are integrated into photovoltaic modules, also has considerable room for improvement. In current cells, efficiency ranges between 15% and 22%. With new manufacturing processes and the incorporation of new materials (perovskite), it could approach 40% or even 50% (https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/12/24/perovskite-hjt-tandem-solar-cell-based-on-phosphonic-acid-self-assembled-monolayer-achieves-30-22-efficiency/). At the same time, its incorporation into various construction materials such as glass, stone (brick and tile) and even asphalt is being developed, so that in the future we may not need large ground mounted solar PV farms any more (https://www.solarmagazine.com/solar-panels/transparent-solar-panels/, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221313882200981X).

Similar developments are underway in the wind energy industry (https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/emily-newton/eight-amazing-nextgen-wind-turbines-designs--20230118). Traditional wind turbines are inefficient and environmentally unsatisfactory because they are very difficult to recycle. They also pose a risk to large flying birds and require large areas of land, often only available in ecologically valuable areas.

New Financing Mechanisms and Policies

The typical renewable energy project is financed primarily with debt through bank loans or issuing fixed-income securities. This financing model arose from the generous feed-in tariffs (FiT) granted in the past, which guaranteed a minimum price for the electricity generated. These FiTs have now been replaced almost everywhere by Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). Since the FiT or PPA guaranteed the revenue of the renewable energy project, debt providers had no problem financing them. However, debt providers are necesarrily risk-averse and, for this reason, hinder the introduction of new technologies, such as newly designed, much more environmentally friendly wind turbines.

Price-based FiT policies encouraged expansion in quantity, but not in quality. If renewable energy promoting policies had been linked in part to technological progress instead of price only, we could have avoided many of the problems we are facing today. Storage, increased efficiency, environmental protection, and respect for communities and landowners must become the key elements in any future renewable energy promoting policies and regulations.

Own Fossil Energy Sources

Rejecting climate as a determining factor in the energy transition reopens the door to exploiting our own fossil fuels. Europe has quite a few of them which, though not sufficient, are by no means negligible: coal, natural gas, oil, and thorium for nuclear fission energy.

Coal

Coal is found mainly in the British Isles and Central Europe. Nobody with a minimum of common sense would want to reopen these dirty inefficient coal-fired power plants that used to leave their sticky, thin layer of soot on the monuments of Europe's ancient cities and in the lungs of their inhabitants and visitors. Thanks to coal gasification technology, it is now perfectly possible to generate electricity without emitting gases and pollutants, apart from carbon dioxide, which can never be considered a pollutant as it is essential for plant life. Lacking Russian gas, German industry, without which the European economy cannot exist, will once again have affordable electricity available from its own coal, thus enabling it to begin its much-needed recovery.

Natural Gas and Oil

Vast untapped natural gas reserves lie beneath the North Sea, enough to supply the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Northern Germany for the next 150 years. Significant oil deposits are also known to exist in the waters around Spain's Canary Islands. The legal prohibition (Law 7/2021 on Climate Change and Energy Transition) on even exploring these deposits for ecological reasons is absurd (https://www.libremercado.com/2022-03-19/asi-renuncio-espana-autosuficiencia-energetica-gas-petroleo-riqueza-minerales-criticos-colegio-geologos-6878142/), since their exploitation is definitely not incompatible with tourism if environmentally sustainable methods are used. Furthermore, it would represent an invaluable source of additional wealth if the local people of the Canary Islands were involved in its exploitation.

Nuclear Energy

In the same Law 7/2021, for the same ecological reasons it was decided to close existing Spanish nuclear power plants after they would have reached the end of their life cycle and to prohibit the construction of any new ones. This decision severely limits Spain's ability to have a stable electricity production in the short term, since, apart from the problem of radioactive waste, nuclear energy has only advantages: it is cheap, reliable, and does not emit polluting gases.

However, in the long term uranium-based nuclear energy should be discarded, since there are no significant deposits of this metal in Europe. The major uranium producers are all located outside of Europe, in the following order: Kazakhstan, Australia, Namibia, Canada, Uzbekistan, Niger, Russia, China, and Ukraine (https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production); the last three barely produce enough for their own energy supply.

Investing heavily in uranium fission nuclear energy would once again make us dependent on foreign powers, some of which are potentially opposed to European interests. France, which still generates most of its electricity with nuclear power, is already experiencing supply problems due to deteriorating relations with its former African colonies.

















Figure 5: Thorium demonstration power plant in China.

However, the vast thorium deposits in the far north of Europe and Greenland open the door to the medium-term deployment of nuclear energy using reactors fueled by this metal. Thorium reactors do not produce plutonium (fuel for nuclear weapons) and do not even leave a fraction of the radioactive waste produced by uranium reactors (https://web.archive.org/web/20101005073843/, http://www.geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdf), which also takes considerably less time to decay (300 years instead of tens of thousands of years, https://energyfromthorium.com/). The problem is that thorium technology still has a certain way to go in terms of development before it can become commercially viable. However, last year China has put the first demonstration reactor into operation in the Gobi Desert (https://www.financialexpress.com/business/defence-chinas-thorium-reactor-a-step-towards-a-clean-energy-future-but-what-about-india-3149998/).

Turbulent Times

The new US president, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and has resumed exploiting its abundant oil reserves. In the mean time Argentina has done the same. Meanwhile, in Europe, opposition to climate policies is growing as they are blamed for the explosive rise in energy and food prices, much more than the war in Ukraine or the recent turmoil in the Persian Gulf. The rise of the so-called far right to a resounding first place in the polls in Germany (it was already second with a narrow difference in the German parliament after the general elections held last year) perfectly reflects this opposition.

At the same time, France is now in a dangerous state of ungovernability that will force the President at any moment to call new parliamentary elections, in which case an absolute majority for the far right seems to be guaranteed. Finally, in Spain there is a socialist Prime Minister with the most precarious, unstable, and unpredictable parliamentary support in history. After hypothetical snap general elections, in which the current left-wing coalition will most likely be defeated, a coalition that includes Spain's far right seems the only way to form a government.

Should these predictions come true, without any shade of doubt climate policies will be consigned to the proverbial dunghill of history and also will energy transition, exactly because it has been linked too much by mainstream politics to the fight against global warming only. We have seen already how beneficial a patiently and intelligently implemented energy transition can be for Europe. Moreover, the energy transition is essential to preserving, or if necessary, regaining our independence and prosperity. It would be catastrophic for Europe if, along with climate policies, the energy transition too were thrown overboard.
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