Teresa Ribera sees the need to "radically transform" the energy system

Miguel A. Torres (Familia Torres) regrets that society is "dominated by oil"

BARCELONA, 30 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has assured that it is necessary to "radically transform" the energy system and has asked to be very intelligent in how, for what and when environmental resources are used .

He said it this Monday in a recorded message at the opening of the X Environmental Conference 'Wind farms, nuclear power plants, blockchain technologies... Energy and the environment under debate', in which the President of the Family, Torres Miguel A. Torres; the rector of the University of Barcelona (UB), Joan Guàrdia, and the meteorologist and professor of Physics at the UB Tomàs Molina.

Ribera has assured that in Spain there are "the physical and human capacities" to be able to carry out this transformation of the energy system.

The third vice president recalled that the fight against climate change is "a social challenge of great magnitude" and that it is no longer possible to base the economy and growth on the burning of fossil fuels.

He has underlined that this "intelligent" use of resources may conflict with other potential uses and that it is necessary to obtain responses, in his words, effective and fair.

"These are not easy or simple decisions," he acknowledged, although he pointed out that it is an opportunity to manage a new economic model.

The minister has asked not to fall into despair and has assured that this change is "a great stimulus" to rethink the economic, business and growth model.

He lamented that society thought "that growth could be infinite" and that today it is known that there are physical limits to this growth.

For his part, Torres lamented that society is "dominated by oil", since in the last 50 years the economy has grown driven by cheap hydrocarbons, which, in his opinion, should be abandoned.

He has demanded to make the change towards renewables or, temporarily, nuclear ones, although he has warned that "there are no miraculous solutions" to achieve it.

Guàrdia has opted to adapt human behavior to curb climate change in the same way that it was changed during the pandemic, although he stressed that it "costs a lot" to do so.