ANALYSIS - Population Boom Pushes Spain Further From Kyoto Goal
Date: 01-Aug-06
Country: SPAIN
Author: Julia Hayley
The population was less than 40 million in 1997 and by January 2006 was 44.3 million, excluding half a million more illegal migrants from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa.
"No other developed country has had to deal with a 10 percent increase in the population in just a few years," says Spain's Secretary General for the Prevention of Contamination and Climate Change Arturo Gonzalo Aizpiri.
The Industry Ministry revised its 10 year energy plan earlier this year and raised its population growth forecasts for 2011 to 47 million.
"That is more than the scenarios we have used to date, and has a major impact on forecasts of energy demand," it says.
Spain is already the worst performer among signatories to the Kyoto protocol, which aims to curb carbon dioxide emissions by rich nations and therefore reduce global warming.
Industry is successfully controlling its emissions and only slightly overshot its allowance in 2005, the first year in which limits were in force.
But emissions from households, transport and other sectors that are harder to control account for 60 percent of all the CO2 Spain produces, and these are spiralling. The country as a whole spewed out at least 50 percent more CO2 last year than in 1990, when it had agreed to ensure an increase of only 15 percent.
Final energy demand is now forecast to grow 3 percent a year up to 2007 and 2.4 percent a year 2007 to 2011.
"Electricity demand will grow more slowly now than it has done in the last six or seven years," says Pedro Rivero, president of the industry lobby Unesa. "And we hope that energy saving measures will help moderate the peaks."
CARS AND NEW HOMES TO BLAME
The Socialist party's Environment Secretary Soraya Rodriguez says the party has looked hard at Spain's economic model to see why energy intensity -- measured in tonnes of oil equivalent per unit of gross domestic product -- has risen for years while in other European Union countries it has fallen.
The reasons are that 80 percent of transport is by road and construction, which is very energy intensive, is such a big part of the economy, she says. "Those two elements are worrying."
In 2005, energy intensity dipped slightly for the first time, and the government hopes this is the start of a new trend.
As well as investing heavily in railways, the government this year approved new building specifications which mean constructors have to make new homes more energy efficient with better insulation and solar panels on every roof.
Some 800,000 new homes were built in Spain last year, more than France, Germany and Britain together.
"Up to now, we've been using 1970s building standards," Aizpiri says.
TREND TO MAKE POLLUTERS PAY
CO2 emissions from households and transport are difficult to stabilise without politically unpopular measures such as restricting cars in city centres or hiking electricity prices.
Javier Tordable, managing director of the Barcelona-based carbon exchange Sendeco2, says the trend is towards obliging makers of household appliances and cars to price in the CO2 their goods will produce.
"As more sectors are included, the national CO2 allocation plan will be easier to manage," he says. "Liberalising Spain's electricity industry so that it no longer has to sell power below cost will be another major step.
Surveys show Spanish consumers are gradually becoming more environmentally conscious, but they are still among the most wasteful in Europe and the most prone to take out their cars for short journeys.
"Caring for the environment is a luxury," Tordable says.
"We're starting from a very low base. In recent years we've been concentrating on growing economically, on getting rich. Northern Europe has been richer for longer and is way ahead of us in environmental terms."