Ribera assures that "there will be no power cuts this winter" in Spain

BARCELONA, 30 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Third Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has assured that "there will be no electricity cuts this winter" neither domestic nor industrial in Spain, since the Government has closely followed the activity of operators to be able to determine if there is a moment of crisis.

"In 99% it is impossible for there to be any type of cut, only if many unexpected factors are added, accidents, meteorological problems, could we find some type of limitation," he explained in an interview this Tuesday in Rac 1 collected by Europa Press.

Ribera has sent a message of calm to the citizens, and has justified that the situation in Spain "has absolutely nothing to do" with the situation in most of the countries of central and northern Europe, because Spain has been isolated as an energy island, which has developed a much more solid and diversified system, in his words.

"This does not mean that it does not affect us at all, it is affecting our prices, because prices in international markets are altered and that, obviously, ends up affecting anyone who consumes natural gas, because there is more demand for that product," has added.

He has assured that the main objective of the Government is to take all possible measures to "mitigate the impact of high prices as much as possible through regulatory measures" while they are promoting saving measures or reinforcing social protection measures.

Ribera has assured that the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has turned energy into a weapon of war: "It is important to see what happens to the price of gas, at what price Europe is willing to buy it, how regulation can dissociate the price of gas with the price of electricity, because the cost of producing electricity is not the same cost as generating electricity with gas".

"The price of gas cannot be the one that sets the price of all the electricity we consume, because the price of gas only matters about 20% of the electricity we consume, the rest is produced with other types of costs that have nothing to do with the cost of gas on international markets and it makes no sense to pay it back in the same way", he added.

Ribera says that it is necessary to bet "definitely" on renewable energies, to reduce gas-based options as much as possible and look for local alternatives, such as renewables.

"It is true that we are in a difficult situation, but it is also true that we have never found ourselves in a difficult situation with so many resources available," he said.

Likewise, he has assured that Catalonia "is late" in the transition towards renewable energies, and has stated that he hopes that the Generalitat will speed up the pace, in his words.

He recalled that Catalonia is a highly industrialized Community, in which, as in the rest of Spain, citizens expect energy comfort, which is why he assured that "small interventions will not be enough to cover consumption demand" renewables of the Catalans.