Euskadi and the Challenge of Transition: Toward Energy Colonialism?

• The Basque Autonomous Community (CAV) faces high industrial energy demands while producing only 7.9% of its electricity from renewable sources, leading to a heavy reliance on external energy.
• As the region moves away from fossil fuels, there is a significant risk of falling into a pattern of "renewable energy colonialism" by importing clean energy rather than generating it locally.
• Global giants like Iberdrola exemplify the classic colonial dynamic where control and economic profit are concentrated in a hub, while production and environmental impacts are externalized to other territories.

Energy Dependency and Global Inequality

• The European Union imports 57% of its energy, largely relying on fossil fuels from regions like Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, and Colombia.
• The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remains central to the global supply chain, providing over 70% of the world's cobalt, as well as copper and lithium, which are essential for battery and renewable infrastructure.
• Domestic disparity in Spain: While regions like Castilla y León generate 97.2% of their power from renewables, the Basque region struggles with significant deficits in domestic renewable infrastructure.

The Risks of Passive Transition

• The Basque government has consistently missed renewable energy targets, struggling to reach the planned 20% threshold.
• Nearby Navarre, which shares similar geographical and climatic conditions, demonstrates that the lack of production in the Basque country is not a technical impossibility but a political choice; Navarre produced 67.5% of its electricity from renewables in 2024.
• Relying on imported electricity is politically convenient as it avoids local land-use conflicts, but it maintains dependency, increases system costs, and results in transmission losses (up to 10% in long-distance transport).

Alternatives and Economic Competitiveness

• Experts like Cristóbal Gallego advocate for decentralized energy generation, self-consumption, and energy communities to align infrastructure with the socio-environmental reality of the region.
• Access to abundant, low-cost, decarbonized electricity is becoming a key factor for industrial competitiveness; regions that fail to produce their own energy risk economic decline.
• The future of the Basque economy depends on whether it chooses to continue as a "metropolis" that imports resources and displaces impacts, or as a territory that takes responsibility for its own energy production to ensure long-term stability.