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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/14/were-proud-to-be-pioneers-inside-spains-community-energy-revolution>
"It began in the small Catalan town of Taradell as a plan to provide local
people with allotments where they could grow their own food.
Four activists came together with the aim of promoting good environmental
practices in local agriculture and business, as well as supplying renewable
energy. The project, however, was about much more than growing vegetables.
The town has a strong tradition of community action, and as the initiative
gathered momentum, the activists formed a cooperative, Taradell Sostenible,
which now has 111 members and supplies power to more than 100 households. These
include some of the area’s most vulnerable citizens, says Eugeni Vila, the
coop’s president. “The question was how could people with few resources join
the coop when membership costs €100,” says Vila. “We agreed that people
designated as poor by the local authority could join for only €25 and thus
benefit from the cheap electricity we generate.”
Taradell Sostenible have installed solar panels on the roofs of a sports centre
and a cultural centre to supply electricity to the community, with funding from
the government’s Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy (IDAE),
which is working to expand energy communities across the country.
“We’re very proud of the fact that IDAE describes us as pioneers,” says Vila.
“The EU’s Next Generation funding, which we got through IDAE, helped us to
complete these two projects.”
Once they were up and running, they realised they needed more professional
management, so in 2022 they combined forces with other local energy
communities.
Renewable energy is flourishing in Spain, a country with no gas or oil and
little coal of its own, but an abundance of sunshine. For years, solar
installation was held back by the notorious “sunshine tax” introduced in 2015.
Rather than reward individuals for installing solar power, the government taxed
them after the big power companies successfully argued that energy
self-sufficiency amounted to unfair competition.
That tax was abolished in 2018, and energy self-sufficiency, mainly through
photovoltaic panels, has increased 17-fold, according to the IDAE. The
institute is now turning its attention from subsidising solar installations on
individual homes to prioritising energy communities such as Taradell, with
initial funding of €148.5m (£130m) earmarked for 200 projects."
Via Susan ****
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
