Madrid once again despises the REF and makes its incentives incompatible with aid to promote wind energy

Then, numerous Canarian businessmen took advantage of aid to encourage the installation of windmills to advance the decarbonization of the islands. Now, five years after that and when the investments are undertaken, when justifying the aid and making payments to the promoters, the IDAE warns that state subsidies are not compatible with the REF incentives, such as the RIC and the DIC, and to which some businessmen have joined.

The IDAE considers that both the REF incentives and the subsidy have the same purpose and point out that two grants are not possible for the same project. The Commissioner of the REF as well as the Canary Islands Wind Association (Aeolican) and different advisors consulted defend that the purpose of both aids is not the same. “The FEDER funds seek the energy transition by financing investment and the REF tries to compensate for the extra costs of the outermost periphery and remoteness,” they agree.

Another of the arguments that the promoters rely on to manage to ‘save’ the situation and get the compatibility of the incentives and FEDER funds recognized is that neither the IDAE nor the Ministry of Ecological Transition ever responded to the question posed by written from the Canary Islands about whether the REF incentives were compatible with the aid. The question was formulated to clarify article 10 of the order that regulated the call for aid, published in December 2018, and in which possible incompatibilities were unclearly pointed out. «There was no response and we understood that it was compatible. The promoters presented their projects and now they come to say no,” says the president of Aeolican, Raúl Macías.

The three calls that are in dispute are Eolcan1, Eolcan2 and Solcan, for an aid amount of almost 250 million. It is estimated that there are around 15 projects that benefited from the REF incentives and the FEDER funds and around 50 million euros that the affected businessmen will have to give up, according to close sources. «Many promoters do not have a choice and they are told that they have to choose between one or the other but some have already deducted it for tax purposes. Now they cannot turn back and have to renounce the help of the IDAE,” says Macías.

The president of the REF Commissioner, José Ramón Barrera, has been working for weeks with the Ministry of Ecological Transition to try to “find a legal path that overcomes the incompatibility», although for now he sees a favorable resolution for the Canarian promoters as complicated. “In the future, it has been achieved that all new IDAE calls go through the Commissioner to assess any interference in the REF, but in the reviewed files we see it as complicated,” says Barrera.

Close sources are convinced These files will end up in court and it will have to be a judge who determines the compatibility of the incentives -as defended by the Government of the Canary Islands and the promoters- or not -as supported by the Ministry-.

Commissioner and businessmen meet tomorrow

The Canary Islands Wind Association (Aeolican) will meet tomorrow with the Commissioner of the REF, in a meeting proposed by the former to find out if there is progress in the conversations with the IDAE to save the compatibility of both aids. As Aeolican points out, this matter is the responsibility of the Government of the Canary Islands since it is a “direct attack” against the REF and incentives that seek to reduce the differences with the peninsula.