Applying Fast and Fair principles in Spanish context
Earlier this month, ICLEI Europe organised a training in cooperation with ICLEI Europe member ACM - Associació Catalana de Municipis for municipal representatives managing land-use mediation and community engagement around medium and large-scale RES projects from the region of Catalonia. This session was part of ongoing efforts in Spain under the Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids Initiative to help apply the Fast and Fair principles to the national context. The training brought together a diverse group of participants from across Catalonia, including municipal and county-level representatives, regional government officials, local energy agencies, local ecological transition offices, rural development organisations and civil society actors.
The session centered on ways to boost the capacity of municipalities to influence how renewables projects are designed, negotiated and implemented in a fairer way that is sensitive to the territorial needs.
This training was aimed at shifting the discussion towards a more operational mode by applying the Fast and Fair municipal checklist. This checklist can be used by municipal mayors and staff in guiding fairer projects from the outset. Participants described some of the challenges they are grappling with in Catalonia, such as, limited municipal capacity, expertise and resources; dearth of early information about projects; and unclear local benefits emerging from projects.
Some key takeaways of the event were:
- Prior information regarding the intended project (participants, technologies, land-use and environmental implications, grid and permitting status, community benefits etc.) from promoters to municipalities, citizens and civil society organisations is key.
- Catalonian territorial diversity requires differentiated approaches. Each territory has its own unique characteristics: rural, metropolitan, industrial, agricultural, or tourist-oriented. This diversity makes the deployment of renewable energy a complex process.
- Future municipal training should encompass basic concepts on basic economics of renewable energy projects (such as the cost of kWh, for example)- equipped with this type of knowledge, municipal actors can have more constructive dialogue with promoters and other stakeholders.
- Energy communities are a useful model to enable local transitions, but they require institutional clarity, technical capacity and practical support from the local authorities.
- Electrifying mobility and attracting industrial demand can help to cultivate local electricity demand capable of absorbing growing energy output through renewable sources.
Accelerating renewables depends on territorial actors and in particular municipalities having tools, information and resources to act early and strategically. The training showed that the Fast and Fair checklist can prepare municipalities to request relevant information at the outset of projects, while the Fast and Fair principles can help shift the discussion from only compensation to concrete local value-enhancing measures by linking energy transition with local economic development, linking affordable energy with reindustrialisation, small businesses, agro-food transformation, local production and e-mobility.
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