The 'wind' Spain and the one that is not: 80% of the population of Albacete and Zaragoza lives next to a park; in Madrid and Alicante there is no

Wind energy broke a record in this year 2023. With 61,069 gigawatts/h (GWh), wind was the source of enough electricity to cover 24% of the country's demand and became the first technology among all those that make up the energy mix.. However, these figures have a very uneven distribution in terms of where wind energy is produced.. Castilla y León is the community with the most parks and the most generation and together with Aragón, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia it concentrates 72% of the wind turbines and 80% of the generation. On the contrary, in the Community of Madrid and in six other provinces and autonomous cities there are no parks but, like other communities such as the Basque Country and Navarra, where they are few in number, it also has income from the wind industry, more linked to manufacturing. or patents.

“There is a wind-powered Spain and another that is not,” says the president of the Wind Business Association (AEE), Juan Diego Díaz Vega, as a confirmation of the situation of this sector that is reflected in the Macroeconomic Study on its impact on Spain that was presented a few days ago. Although he adds that “what is not is not so much anymore”, the line is clearly drawn between where wind energy is produced and where it is not.. Although there are no wind turbines, other territories provide patents and technology and, although less, also obtain economic benefits with which to increase their GDP.. On the other hand, the correlation between having more wind farms and generating more electricity in them with the contribution of this activity to the regional GDP or even employment is not completely linear.

51% of the municipalities of Lugo have a park

The report confirms that the distribution of wind activity is “very unequal”. Of the 8,135 municipalities in Spain, the 1,345 wind farms – where 22,042 wind turbines operate – that existed in 2022 were only located in 1,053, which also means that in some there is more than one wind installation. This disparity is reflected in the fact that 51% of the municipalities in the province of Lugo have a wind farm, as occurs in 47% of Las Palmas, 46% of A Coruña or 40% of the towns in the province. from Albacete.

By communities, Castilla y León is the community with the most parks -276-. They are followed by Aragón (187), Galicia (183), Andalusia (167) and Castilla-La Mancha (160). The presence of the “resource”, that is, of the wind, is key in these locations and causes paradoxes such as that Extremadura, which is the community with the most installed photovoltaic energy power, only has one wind farm, like the Balearic Islands, compared to the 114 that are located in the other archipelago, in the Canary Islands.

Regarding the population that lives with a wind farm in their locality, in the provinces of Zaragoza and Albacete, 81 and 82% respectively of their inhabitants have at least one in their locality.. In Valladolid it is 64%; in Palencia, 61%; in Las Palmas, 49%; in Ávila, 41%, or 38% in Murcia.

In total, 10% of Spanish municipalities have at least one wind farm and 11% of the Spanish population lives with them, whether in larger or smaller towns.. For example, in Zaragoza only 17% of the municipalities have wind farms, but 81% of the total population of the province lives there, which indicates that they are larger in size.. At the opposite pole is Galicia, where 35% of the municipalities have at least one park but only 21% of the population lives there.

Not a wind turbine

'Non-wind Spain' is led by the provinces of Córdoba, Girona, Alicante, Badajoz and Madrid and in two autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla, where no wind turbines are installed. In the Balearic Islands there is one and 79 in Cantabria.

However, it does not mean that they are left out of the industry.. In addition to being consumers of electricity that is also generated with wind energy, although not in the most 'annoying' way, in the eyes of the land conservation platforms that protest against the parks.. 'Non-wind' Spain is at the forefront of patents in this sector and obtains notable figures in terms of employment. The example is Madrid, without wind turbines but where between 2006 and 2022 149 patents were registered. The Basque Country is home to 319 parks and registered 212 patents and Navarra, with 3,197, came in first place, with 393. On the contrary, communities with many parks such as Castilla y León or Galicia only registered 18 and 37 patents respectively; In Catalonia there are 2,450 parks and until 2022 it was the birthplace of 104 patents in the wind sector.

Municipal income and regional taxes

That the wind sector is more than wind turbines and that its location does not limit the benefits to the territories with parks is also seen in the employment figures and in the contribution of the sector to the GDP of each community.

When it comes to the direct contribution of the wind sector to the regional GDP, Castilla y León and Galicia are almost equal (769.1 and 756.6 million in 2022) and Castilla-La Mancha also gets more out of its parks, which They represent income of 448.5 million compared to 385 million in Andalusia.

Although it does not have parks, the wind sector contributed 15.4 million to Madrid's GDP in 2022 and 256 and 202 million respectively to Navarra and the Basque Country, with fewer parks than, for example, Catalonia, to whose GDP the wind sector contributed 137.3 millions.

Where Castilla y León is most relegated compared to other communities with a large wind presence is in terms of employment.. The sector employed 2,274 people there compared to 3,760 in Galicia, with fewer parks and less than in places with much fewer parks, such as the Basque Country (2,722 jobs) and Navarra (2,377).. In Madrid this sector created 1,355 jobs.

The income that is typical of the communities with wind farms is from the fees that each one sets for installing wind turbines in their territories or for their power.. Castilla y León, 30 million for 4,748 wind turbines; Galicia, 22.2 million for the activity of the 4,003 in its territory and Castilla-La Mancha, 15.6 million for 3,293 wind turbines of different power.

The AEE report states that “wind farms tend to be located in municipalities where the population is lower (Empty Spain), helping to establish population, given that they generate economic activity and employment”. However, the figures that compare the average income of each province with the average income of the towns within it that have localities with wind farms do not show much difference between the two.. Taking the data from 2020, the average net annual income per person in Spain was 12,214 euros and in municipalities with “wind presence”, 12,281. The balance was positive for the municipalities with parks in 23 provinces but not in 22 – another seven do not have them – and the greatest difference in income thanks to wind turbines in places with large parks – at least 400MW – occurred in the province of Teruel, of a general average income of 12,555 euros compared to that of towns with parks, 13,163 euros. There are even places where the balance is negative. In Cuenca, municipalities with wind farms have an annual income that is 254 euros lower and in Navarra, 242 euros.

It does represent a clear direct gain for the owners of the land where the parks are located, under the most frequent form of leasing, much more used than the “difficult” expropriations or the also unusual land purchases, which can only be done when the owner is a natural person but not, for example, when they are public forests. The rent of the land on which the wind farms are built is calculated based on the installed power, the turnover or the occupied surface and, according to the figures from the AEE report – which agree with the appetite for renting land that is confirmed a specialized lawyer – is a good deal: the lease per megawatt is 1.10 euros per square meter per year, while the profit from selling the land is 1.02 euros per square meter, only once.