The Government has started another year and another legislature with the National Energy Security Strategy expired since 2017. It is a document designed to protect the supply and shield key infrastructures for the supply of energy throughout the country from threats. The current protocol was activated by Mariano Rajoy's government in 2015 and since then it has not been retouched, despite the fact that Pedro Sánchez's government began the review process four years ago, after admitting that the development of a new strategy was a matter of "vital importance".
It was Carmen Calvo, then Minister of the Presidency, who in October 2020 signed the order for the preparation of a new National Energy Security Strategy. He did not set a deadline to complete a task in which a dozen ministries were involved, from Ecological Transition and Transport, to Defense and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Department of National Security of the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government and the National Intelligence Center (CNI). This media outlet has asked two of the ministries involved about the status of the process, which have not commented.
The main responsibility for the process fell on two departments. The first, the energy portfolio led by Teresa Ribera, which assumed responsibility for drawing up the new protocol through a Specialised Committee chaired by the Secretary of State for Energy, Sara Aagesen. The second, the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government headed since 2021 by Óscar López (then under the direction of Iván Redondo), which coordinates the process through the National Security Council.
Already in 2017, Mariano Rajoy's government admitted that its energy protocol had become obsolete and this was reflected in that year's National Security Strategy. The document, which is updated every five years, warned of Spain's dependence on certain areas of Africa where geopolitical instability "directly endangers supply and may cause an escalation in oil and gas prices" and concluded that the country was heading towards a new paradigm. Diagnosis? The energy protocol had to be revised.
But the motion of censure and Sánchez's arrival at La Moncloa left the review at a standstill and it was not until three years later when the BOE took up the order that it reactivated, only formally, the process. To date, there is no news of an update that the National Security Strategy itself that the previous government of PSOE and Podemos approved in December 2021, a year ahead due to the pandemic, also considered necessary.
"The new energy paradigm requires a reviewof the 2015 National Energy Security Strategy, for an adequate update and fit into this framework, where the European Green Deal and the Paris Agreements of 2015 must also be taken into consideration," reads the 2021 document signed by Sánchez himself.
In addition to the new green approaches, sources in the sector highlight important events that, in themselves, would justify an update of the aforementioned protocol, such as the outbreak of a war in Ukraine that plunged Europe into the biggest energy crisis since the 70s or the cooling of the government's relationship with Algeria. one of Spain's historic energy allies.
Pressure from the Green Front
The clamor for an overhaul has reached the private sector. From the renewable front, the companies have noted in their list of priority issues to be discussed with Minister Ribera in the current legislature the updating of the aforementioned protocol. In part, this is due to the blackout of thermal power plants and the nuclear shutdown schedule, two processes that are progressively transferring to clean technologies the burden that has hitherto been shared between coal, atomic energy and gas.
And the fact is that the new green world, the one promoted by the Government's energy policy, where around 80% of the electricity consumed by Spain will come from clean energies, windmills, solar panels and hydrogen are calling for its promotion as "strategic infrastructure", a condition that they want the new Energy Security Strategy to reflect.