“uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç

Customers opting for Iberdrola's green power package (main story) will receive electricity from large hydro and the small hydro stations that operate outside Spain's special renewables tariff subsidy model. The tariff covers all renewables, including wind. Until the legal situation is clarified regarding special marketing and pricing of subsidised renewables, Iberdrola, which operates over 1400 MW of wind plant, will keep wind out of the mix.

"The important thing is to keep [renewables] sales as transparent as possible and to win customer confidence," says an Iberdrola source. The race is now on to find a model by which already subsidised wind can be traded as green-tagged power. Iberdrola is considering lobbying for special regulation allowing subsidised renewables to make extra earnings from special trading, as long as these earnings are pumped back into renewables investment or energy efficiency and public awareness campaigns.

Spain's other three utilities, increasingly less supportive of renewables, could be jolted back into action by Iberdrola's bold green step. Previously, Spain had only one trader in pure renewables, Electranorte, a small distributor and wind plant investor in Asturias region (“uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç, December 2002).