Ignacio Galán, the only Spanish businessman to participate in the IEA world summit
Madrid
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The President of Iberdrola, Ignacio Galán, has been the only Spanish businessman and one of the few Europeans who has spoken today at the great world forum called by the International Energy Agency (IEA) under the title "IEA Clean Energy Transitions Summit" , and Iberdrola, the largest private utility in the world to participate. This summit, in which most of the world's GDP and around 80% of energy consumption and global emissions have been represented electronically, has allowed very limited access for the business sector.
During his intervention in the panel "Resilient and Sustainable Electricity Sector" Galán gave his vision of what should be the cornerstones of green recovery. The electricity sector will be key in it, after having demonstrated its great resilience during the Covid-19 crisis.
Firstly, the President of Iberdrola has analyzed the challenge posed by the massive growth of renewable capacity worldwide. "It is already a reality in all markets, given the competitiveness and sustainability of the available technology." But to support this growth, Galán stressed, "we will need significant investments in infrastructure (networks and storage) that will allow us to integrate this new renewable energy into the system, in order to maintain stability and security of supply."
In this sense, "it is essential to have long-term remuneration periods and stable and predictable regulations that allow us to safely develop the technology that we already have," added the president of Iberdrola.
Regarding new technologies such as green hydrogen, which represent an opportunity for decarbonisation for certain sectors, he highlighted the need to allocate more resources to R + D + i, with stimulus packages that make them competitive.
"Short, medium and long-term planning will be absolutely essential if we want to create attractive frameworks," said Galán, who acknowledged that in recent days there have been good signs in this direction, with decisions to accelerate investment in networks and renewable and with the new strategy launched yesterday by the European Union.
All of this, in the opinion of Iberdrola's president, will have to go hand in hand with the development of a market model that provides the necessary returns to backup technologies, in a system with increasing renewable penetration. "Otherwise, security will be in jeopardy and without security there is no sustainability."
High-level participants included António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations; Alok Sharma, Secretary of State of the United Kingdom and President of the next COP26, and the ministers of the countries that held the last two meetings of the COP (Spain and Chile). They have been joined by the President of the Asian Development Bank, the President of the World Economic Forum (Davos), the first swords of the world energy sector, large investors and representatives of civil society.
The participants also included representatives of the world's largest energy consumers: Minister Zhang Jianhua of China; US Secretary Dan Brouillette; Minister RK Singh of India; and the Minister of Japan, Kajiyama Hiroshi.
