This Monday, Pedro Sánchez confirmed the appointment of Sara Aagesen as Minister of Ecological Transition and highlighted her as “one of the greatest experts in energy transition”. Aagesen (Madrid, 1976) maintains the vice-presidency that Ribera already had, in an appointment with high symbolic power for a minister who does not have the political weight within the PSOE that his predecessor and until now boss had. It should be remembered that the Ecological Transition, a key ministry for Pedro Sánchez, is a spending portfolio which brings together 40% of the actions planned in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
The current Secretary of State is Ribera’s natural replacement. Aagesen accompanied the woman who is still at the head of this super ministry for a large part of her career. The last four years, since January 2020, as Secretary of State for Energy, a position for which she was appointed in 2020 to replace the recently deceased José Domínguez Abascal.
A few weeks earlier, Aagesen, then a simple advisor to the ministry, had already stood out during one of the sessions of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP25) in 2019, which had to be improvised in Madrid due to the impossibility of holding that in Chile. A few weeks later, she was named Secretary of State for Energy. The more than four years spent at the head of this Secretary of State make her the person who has held this position the longest since the beginning of democracy and the first woman to occupy it.
During this period, Aagesen was in charge of the main regulations of his department to promote electricity self-consumption and renewable energies, during the turbulent years in which the Executive launched the so-called social shield to protect more vulnerable with the onset of the pandemic. . Subsequently, Spain managed to impose in the EU, hand in hand with Portugal, the so-called Iberian solution to contain the electricity price crisis after the invasion of Ukraine and the explosion gas prices.
A chemical engineer from the Complutense University of Madrid, specializing in Environment, Aagesen has developed his entire professional career linked to the field of energy and the environment. Between 2002 and 2018, he worked at the Climate Change Office, participating in the development of the 2020 roadmap for diffuse sectors or the design and implementation of the first national emissions allocation plan.
Only in the area it has managed until now, the ministry will have to issue key regulations in the coming months such as new network remuneration, payments for the capacity of gas plants, new self-consumption regulations, revision of the special regime. renewable energies and the transposition of European regulations on critical raw materials.
With a Spanish mother and a Danish father, the new vice-president is the mother of two children and among her hobbies is music (she collects vinyl records). He is a highly valued person in the energy sector, who these days is making pools to find out who will be the person who will occupy the position that he leaves vacant within the Secretariat of State to Energy. Among the names considered are that of Joan Groizard, current director of the Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving (IDAE).
