Spain shoots up its greenhouse gases in 2017

Those thousand enterprises -of the electrical and industrial sector- accumulate around 40% of all the GHGs in the country.

Besides that, Spain is one of the European countries in which GHGs grew most last year, together with Portugal.

This news appears in a moment when the political parties are discussing the future law of climate change and energy transition in Parliament. Among the proposals of this law, which the Government expects to approve during this year, it is to increase the price of a CO2 ton. At the beginning of April, the price of a ton was around 13 euro. In countries like the UK, where the price of the ton is 20 euro, its raise was used to have deterrent effects.

In 2017, the total expelled by the Spanish companies was 136 million, a figure that, if the aviation sector is added, rises to 141 million ton (see Fig.)

"The energy factor is the one that most influences that rise", Marc Felguera, Director of Vertis Environmental, says. "Last year, because of the drought, very little electricity was generated through dammed water and a lot of coal was used". In fact, eight of the ten plants that expelled the most CO2 where facilities that utilize coal to generate electricity.

The drought influenced the increased of GHGs last year, but it also does the paralysis of the renewable energy installations that Spain is experiencing since 2012 as a result of the crisis.

Source: El País