The government of Extremadura will be part of the Association of Intelligent Specialization of Solar Energy (S3), created at the request of the European Commission, to discuss and design the future of electricity production through solar energy, and especially photovoltaic technology and concentrated solar power (CSP).
To this end, the General Director of Industry, Energy and Mines, Olga García, will come to Brussels on Wednesday, May 17, to take part in the meeting of constitution of the new association, which will at the same time define the main objectives and Your roadmap for the next few years.
Specifically, this solar alliance comes under the framework of the Intelligent Energy Specialization Platform (S3PEnergy), created in 2015 by the European Commission to promote interregional cooperation in the field of energy, constituting a space where regions and members Of the community receive support for an «optimal and effective» management of the Cohesion Funds in this area.
«Clean energy is one of the main priorities for most of the regions of the European Union and continues to be for Extremadura. We went ahead with the huge deployment of photovoltaic and solar thermal plants that took place between 2007 and 2011, in which they invested 6 billion euros. There has not been another sector that has matched those figures. We want to retake that leadership of Extremadura», explains Olga García.
In this way, the director general will try to promote the arrival of public and private investments in solar energy projects in Extremadura, through this Association of Intelligent Specialization of Solar Energy, as reported by the Board in a press release.
To do this, it will expose the «potential» of Extremadura for the development of solar energy projects, which currently covers 65 percent of electricity demand with renewable energy, so «there is no other region in the world that approaches This percentage «.
In June 2016, during the 1st Conference of Intelligent Regions, the European Commission launched two other platforms for intelligent specialization: the Platform for Industrial Modernization and Agri-Food (Agri-Food), in which Extremadura also participates. Both are in addition to the Intelligent Energy Specialization Platform, S3PEnergy, which is divided into five areas: Bioenergy, Renewable Marine Power, Intelligent Networks, Solar Energy and Sustainable Building.
