The San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council has put out to tender the electricity supply contract for all its municipal buildings for an estimated value of €12,4 million, including taxes, if the contract is executed for the planned four years (two initial years plus two additional years). The contract does not include a reward for the use of renewable energy. The contract, recently published on the Public Sector Procurement Platform, is the largest energy contract for the southern local government, with a direct impact on schools, sports facilities, cultural centers, and administrative buildings.
In a municipality like San Bartolomé de Tirajana, which welcomes millions of tourists each year and aspires to become a carbon-neutral destination, these types of contractual decisions can make the difference between institutional coherence and mere discursive greenwashing. The electricity supply contract for public buildings is a key opportunity to drive a real energy transition. For now, that opportunity appears to have been squandered.
The base tender budget for the first two years amounts to €2.339.857,89 (excluding taxes), or €4.998.289,38 including IGIC. The successful bidder must guarantee the supply of low- and high-voltage electricity to more than one hundred consumption points throughout the municipality. As detailed in the technical specifications, the successful bidder will be responsible for providing all the energy necessary to cover total demand, under conditions of quality and continuity of service.
However, despite the contract's volume and institutional commitments to sustainability, the document does not assign specific or differentiated weight to renewable energy in the award criteria. Seventy-five percent of the total score depends exclusively on the price offered, while the remaining 75% is linked to the subjective assessment of a technical report where, while the use of green energy could be mentioned, it is neither required nor explicitly rewarded. This absence contrasts with the growing practices in other administrations that, in response to the climate emergency, incorporate the renewable origin of the energy supplied as a mandatory or subsidized criterion.
For the main electricity contract for the most important tourist municipality in the Canary Islands, energy sustainability is therefore subject to the will of the bidder and the discretion of the technical evaluation body. In other words, a company could win the contract even if it does not guarantee that the energy it supplies comes from clean or low-environmental sources.
The document does establish that the energy supplied must meet the voltage, frequency, and continuity levels required by current regulations, but it does not require a Guarantee of Origin (GdO) label or a minimum proportion of green energy. The text alludes to the possibility of assessing "the suitability of the proposal in relation to the strategic, technical, and regulatory framework for electricity supply," but without developing binding indicators or objectives.
