An article by the EnergyNews Expert Club has been published in which Piet Holtrop expresses his views on the situation of the civil rights in the midst of the confinement and deepens in the debate generated by Planet of the Humans, the new documentary on the climate crisis by Michael Moore.
In the struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic, our civil rights have been drastically restricted, and with it the rule of law. While these restrictions are understandable to most of us, it is a vitally important exercise to question, to challenge everything, being very critical of the limitations of civil rights. The rule of law may appear to be a robust fortress, but in reality, it is only a newly built little house.
Speaking of controversy, a new documentary on the climate crisis, Planet of the Humans, by the American filmmaker Michael Moore, has been released in the last few days. Moore, a well-known provoker, expresses in the documentary that the promotion of renewable energies will not be enough to solve the climate crisis. In a way he reminds us of the book by his compatriot Charles Mann, “The Wizard and the Prophet”, about the green revolution by Norman Borlaug (the Wizard), and the founder of modern environmentalism, William Vogt (the Prophet). Moore, in this case, leans toward the Prophet’s position.
The documentary has been criticized for attacking renewable energy with false facts. It must be taken into account that the veracity of the facts may be subordinated to the purpose of seeking controversy.
Mann, in the referred book, comes to the conclusion that all the elements of both strategies should be used to solve the climate crisis.

You can read the full article here

One day an old fish met two young fish and asked them, “How is the water today? They answered: “Yes, everything’s fine”, and when the older one had left, one of the young fish asked the other: “Water? What is water?”

With this dialogue, Piet Holtrop begins his article published on 19 February 2020 in the magazine Energías Renovables, in which he illustrates the distortion of reality that is reflected in the European Commission’s decision, arguing that the remuneration system of Royal Decree 661/2007 had not only been absorbed by the current remuneration system of Royal Decree 413/2014 (improper retroactivity) but had even disappeared entirely from the past (own retroactivity).
This decision has had a number of negative consequences for the representatives of Holtrop and that is why the proceedings to annul it were initiated with the cassation appeal, which was admitted by the Court of Justice under reference C-436/2019 P.

After the presentation of the appeal in June 2019, the very influential Royal Decree – Law 17/2019 was approved, which could be considered as a real interference of the Kingdom of Spain, in the exercise of its powers as a Legislating State, in a procedure in which it is a personally involved party. It really creates a very unique situation. In the same way, by means of the corresponding letter to the Court of Justice, an interim measure suspending the period granted to prove the withdrawal of the procedure C-436/2019 P itself before the Spanish public administration has been requested, in order to prevent the Spanish State, as a personally involved party, from overlapping with the capacity of the European Court of Justice to provide effective judicial protection.
The outcome of the appeal before the Court of Justice and the approval of the aforementioned interim measure will have a great legal and economic impact on the appellants, as well as on the renewable sector in Spain in general.

You can read the article here 

“In this semantic debate, instead of seeing the term PPA as a basket of meanings containing many subcategories, some maintain the posture that the PPA that does not coincide with the PPA they signed is not a real PPA. It’s something else: it’s not the real McCoy.”

Piet Holtrop, in the article posted on 19 December 2019 on the blog 20 minutos, reflects on the various possibilities of configuring an PPA according to the different subjects, context and needs of the parties involved, as well as about the existence of a “true PPA”. This panorama of possible configurations is likely to be further expanded in the near future, as the EU Directive 2018/2001 on renewable energies, which is part of the “Winter Package”, opens the door to making the consumer a subject capable of signing PPA contracts.

Piet, considers a PPA as a means to satisfy the needs of a subject, not as an end. In that sense, the name in question is of subordinate importance.

You can read it here

He decided to invest all his savings and asked for a loan to build a 100 kW photovoltaic plant. Everything was working as expected until 2010, when he recieved a government letter that stated: “your plant does not fullfill the new requirements”.

Back in those years, the situation for other renewable producers wasn’t great either because they were facing reductions of 30% to 50% on the subsidies recieved. But for César was even worse, his facility was no longer part of the subsidied system, so he began to not recieve any sort of state help. 

Because of this situation, he is only recieving the 10% of the expected renevue for the sale of electricity, provoking the impossibility to return the loans to the banking institutions. This gap inbetween the projected incomes and the ones effectively recieved has triggered the seizure of diferent properties he held.

César has had the pro bono advice of Piet Holtrop, who warns of this situation as another demostration of the disproportion in the measures, undertaken by the government, for the reduction of the promotional scheme of the renewable energies.

The actor has not given up, he has been through a hunger strike in front of the headquarters of PSOE (social democrat, center-left party), he got naked infront of the photovoltaic facility he built, and he has developed a video in which he reports his situation. 

The full article is available here.

Therefore we should add a (spoiler alert) warning both to my article and to the directive itself, since the entire script of the Spanish legislation for self-consumption is contained in Article 21 of the European directive. There shouldn’t be, therefore, any unpredicted event for anyone in this regard.

The full article is available here.

To read the full article, click here.

Click here to read the opinion article.

From the entry into force of Directive 2018/2001, last December 24, 2018, the Spanish State can not approve regulations contrary to that Directive. This is our semiconductor, which only passes legislation and regulation that tends to comply with Directive 2018/2001, everything that goes in the opposite direction is considered to be contrary to EU law and illegal. Thus, repealing Royal Decree – Law 15/2018 and the new Royal Decree of self-consumption without further ado, would be prohibited.

The full article is available here.

In it, I explain that the use of hydrogen is increasing considerably, and that the demand for electricity to produce this hydrogen will generate a floor in the electricity market price.

The full article is available here.

In that article I explain that, during my visit to Luxembourg on the occasion of the oral hearing before the CJEU for the Hydraulic Canon, I was notified of a preliminary ruling on the IVPEE in the PO 1491/17 procedure before the Superior Court of Justice of Valencia. The issues raised by the SCJ of Valencia coincide with those raised in our proceedings, focusing, among other things, on the indirect nature of the IVPEE. We now have all the procedures on the disastrous tariff reform for Spanish renewable energies on the CJEU in Luxembourg.

The full article is available here.

The full article is available here.

The full article is available here.