The leaders of Enagás, Agbar in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands and the Spanish Association of Petroleum Products Operators (AOP) agreed this Saturday that the future of sustainable energy supplies depends on a technological revolution and vice versa.
The XXVIII Economics Meeting in S’Agaró (Girona) debated energy transformation with the president of Enagás, Antonio Llardén; the general director of Agbar in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, Narciso Berberana, and the director of the AOP, Andreu Puñet, moderated by ‘La Vanguardia’ journalist Eduardo Magallón.
Gas storage is ‘infinitely better’
Llardén (Enagás) has said that this investment is “infinitely better than a year ago” in gas because the average of the countries exceeds 90%, although THAT does not guarantee supply for the entire year, but it does for the winter.
Despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has at least served to make the EU consider that supply should be a common policy, which has led to greater efforts in storage.
Since the invasion, Spain has been fully supplied with gas (it receives it from almost 20 countries) and has also been able to receive much more gas than necessary: it has stored a lot of it and has even “re-exported” it to France, Portugal, Morocco and Italy, since the EU has also started to talk about solidarity.
“We would have to have a window of peace in the next six months in the war in Ukraine,” he said, since the markets always reject uncertainty: if it gets closer to peace, prices would drop.
Looking to the future, he has warned that today “it is NATO that protects” Europe, so the role of the United States is important, which is also a self-sufficient country in gas and also exports it.
He explained that the US is Spain’s first supplier and that Algeria has gone from being the first to the second, although it is “a reliable and very important supplier.”
Regarding hydrogen production, he stated that it is a very important part of the decarbonization process, and that Spain must aspire to be self-sufficient in green hydrogen and even export, and added that “a technological revolution is needed” for energy in general. . .
“We have to regenerate 100% of the water we consume”
Berberana (Agbar) hoped that it would not be necessary to transport water by boat in the face of the drought, because it is an “extremely expensive” alternative, and has warned that supply by tanker truck would require 92,000 of these vehicles each day for the Barcelona area.
He has also stated that regenerated water does guarantee the future: “We have to be able to regenerate 100% of the water we consume.”
Furthermore, he has valued the fact that treating wastewater contributes to promoting ‘green jobs’, obtaining fertilizer and generating energy, and has highlighted “the generation of biogas through the treatment of wastewater.”
To exemplify the energy cost of each way of obtaining water, he said that the traditional treatment of surface water from a river has a cost of 1, regenerated water has a cost of 2, desalinated water costs 4-6 (depending on the technology) and boat water costs skyrocket: “We have to put more digits; I don’t even want to say it, because we would end up in tens.”
And in addition to this energy cost, he has warned about the environmental cost, which is why he has once again defended regenerated water, with “many more intangibles; not because they cannot be measured, but because they are not valued.”
Furthermore, he has defended that there is no cheaper treatment in health terms than the treatment of wastewater and the sanitation system: “It is the cheapest hospital.”
Transformation depends on technology.
Puñet (AOP) has said that liquid fuels have a future because they have already begun to have “a renewable origin”, from various renewable raw materials, so refineries will become centers of the circular economy, and there will be neutrality of CO2 emissions.
This conversion will only culminate “on the basis of technology, not ideology”, and therefore depends on a lot of investment, but the sector in Spain “has the will and the capacity, if allowed”, and is even already doing it.
And he has given a figure as an example of the importance of moving forward: each additional point of renewable fuels that is introduced into current fuels means reducing 860,000 tons of CO2.
These tons are equivalent to the CO2 savings represented by 425,000 electric vehicles (Spain today has 110,000 of these vehicles).
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS