Adeje and E.ON Innovation, are launching an innovative energy community “Adeje Verde” – the first of its kind in Europe. The solution will enable residents and local entities to produce, share and collectively use their own renewable electricity, with the aim of eventually having up to 100% of their energy needs met by local renewable sources.
The project is the first auto-consumption energy community in Europe with an innovative citizen involvement approach, based on the new Electricity Market Directive (article 16) of the EU Clean Energy Package, which indicates that excess solar photovoltaic (PV) energy no longer needs to be fully fed back to the grid and can instead be passed on to neighbours. This regulatory adjustment makes up the basis of the first energy community in Spain’s Canary Islands. Situated in the municipality of Adeje, it will consist of a number of local ‘circles’, each equipped with a roof PV plant at its centre and run by a prosumer (producer and consumer of energy). Every such PV system will provide solar energy for a number of consumers in the direct neighbourhood within a 500-meter radius E.ON Innovation will coordinate the installation of PV plants as well as match prosumers with consumers.
The first PV system has been installed on the rooftop of Adeje’s music school. It is expected that until the summer of 2022 140 households will start to collectively self-consume the energy of this PV plant. The school’s PV will produce about 149,200 kilowatt-hour (kwh) per year, which will reduce CO2 emissions by 116 tons annually. If only 20% of European citizens were to be part of a local energy community like Adeje Verde, 6.400.000 tons of CO2 emission could be saved. This is equivalent to banning 25,600,000 combustion engine cars from European streets.
The Mayor of Adeje José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga commented: “In order to protect our environment sustainably, we in Adeje are working towards changing attitudes and raising awareness – both among our residents and the many who choose Costa Adeje as their holiday destination. A more sustainable future is only possible by pursuing shared goals and benefits. The Adeje Verde energy community is an important lever for us.”
In parallel E.ON Innovation will work on extending the availability of new PVs in Adeje, so that more and more circles can be connected to expand the community. This will enable people who don’t have space for their own PVs to enjoy the benefits of solar energy. The overarching target is that all citizens of Adeje get the opportunity to access the local solar power of their neighbourhood and that they can become the fastest growing energy community in Europe.
Luis Hernandez, Director General of Adeje Verde, added, “We will help residents to connect to good energy: in Adeje we will create the first community that corresponds to the new European guidelines, which will be applied throughout Europe in the coming years. Spain is a front-runner with this new regulation and here we’re creating a blueprint and a role model for further pan- European approaches that enable citizens to simply and actively contribute to a faster, sustainable and more affordable energy transition.”
Many EU islands are blessed with excellent conditions for producing energy from sun, wind and waves. However, they often lack the infrastructure needed to make full use of this. Energy storage and lower grid capacities present major challenges, which make most islands import energy from fossil fuel sources from the mainland. Because of this islands offer an ideal testing ground for future energy systems. Tenerife is no exception – 79% of island’s electricity comes from fossil sources. This is unsustainable and also expensive – in islands electricity prices can be up to ten times what they are on the mainland. The government of the Canary Islands is trying to break this mode by aiming to run all islands on 100% renewables by 2040. The new Adeje Verde energy community will be a big part of this transformation. It is set to be a pilot for how the rest of the region can produce and use its own sustainable energy and become a pan-European blueprint.
