“It is impossible to consider the possibility of a regasification plant in a city of 400.000 inhabitants, because it generates extraordinary pollution and has a decisive impact on people's health.”
Antonio Morales, president of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, once again proclaimed this Friday the opposition of the island government to the creation of the regasification plant planned by the company Totisa for the Port of Las Palmas, stating forcefully that "it is absolutely unacceptable that anyone might think that we are going to allow gas to slow down the work we have been doing in recent years to make the decarbonisation of the island possible."
The highest authority of Gran Canaria made this clear during the visit he made to the Greenpeace ship 'Arctic Sunrise', which is docked in the capital's port, and whose leaders expressed their gratitude "for the enormous work carried out by the organization, on its route through different countries of the world, to raise awareness about the energy transition and to denounce that gas is not an element of transition, since it is highly polluting and much more conducive to global warming than oil," he maintained.
Likewise, President Morales did not hesitate to describe the visit of this ship as “fundamental for us and also for the citizen platform that defends the rejection of the installation in the Port of La Luz and Las Palmas of a regasification plant that has nothing to do with supplying ships. It is a plant to provide energy through gas to the Island of Gran Canaria”, he specified, to emphasize, immediately afterwards, that this rejection is widely shared on the Island, since “we have expressed it both in the Plenary Session of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria and in the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and other institutions have also done so in the same sense”.
In this context, he praised the initiative of the creators of this “brave and committed” citizen platform, for which the presence of Greenpeace, without a doubt, at this time, represents a moral action at this time, as well as being a way of making it clear to the citizens of Gran Canaria that there is an international organisation of these characteristics here, with extensive experience and with sufficient knowledge and authority to tell us that gas cannot be an alternative,” he argued. “And it is telling us that it would be outrageous for us to take a step back, when Gran Canaria is currently leading the penetration of clean energy in the Islands, when we are about to start with offshore wind power and when we are going to have an extraordinary storage plant in Salto de Chira, which will mean that, in 2030, we will be at 70 and 80% clean energy.”
For these reasons, among many others, the island president considered it “impossible” to consider the possibility of installing a regasification plant, “at the moment we are in, with the advance of clean energies, with the possibility that we have in Gran Canaria of becoming a reference point, on an Island of almost a million inhabitants, practically unique in the world, capable of being energy sovereign,” he said. “It would be a step backwards and putting obstacles in the way of this transition model that we have designed and on which all public institutions are working in a coordinated manner, with true unanimity. The Covenant of Mayors for Climate, in which the 21 municipalities participate with the Cabildo, has a clear and precise strategy, which no one can trip up.”
A long history of opposition to gas on the island
During his address to the media, Antonio Morales also looked back to recall “the long struggle on this island against the regasification of Gran Canaria”. He recalled the attempt in the 90s to create a regasification plant in Arinaga and a gas pipeline to the south and to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, with the aim of sustaining the production of energy on the island with gas. “There was enormous institutional and citizen rejection, and despite the fact that the project had the approval of various institutions and went through various administrative processes, in the end, the citizens and the institutions managed to stop it”, he recalled. “And today we insist, if that regasification plant were to come into being at that time, today we would not have renewable energy in Gran Canaria, because that practice must be amortized and, therefore, there would be no place for us to invest in clean energy on the island”.
But that was not all, because, about four or five years ago, there was an attempt to introduce city gas, “which was another way of making us dependent on gas. It meant opening up all the cities and all the homes so that we could replace conventional electric stoves with gas ones,” he reflected. “The Cabildo opposed it, we went to Europe, we won and this environmental attack was prevented from being perpetrated in Gran Canaria. And now the same thing is happening, because, behind the back door, they are trying to create a regasification plant to supply 70 megawatts to Gran Canaria.”
In response to this new attempt, Morales highlighted the existence of a good number of reports against the regasification plant at the Port of Las Palmas. “It is true that the last environmental report is missing, but we have also analysed that the decision is not up to the Port Authority, since it depends on Puertos del Estado, which will make the final decision on a facility of this nature,” he explained. “There are still various steps to be taken, but I am totally convinced that a regasification plant in the middle of a city of 400.000 inhabitants is not possible, because it generates extraordinary pollution and because it has a decisive impact on the health of the people who live here.”
In this regard, he stressed that "institutions must be respectful of the procedures and I do not doubt that behind this environmental impact report there are competent technicians who are analysing it with rigour. Therefore, it seems absolutely impossible to me that, after analysing it with such rigour, a project of these characteristics can be approved," he concluded.
