This Monday, the Executive of Jorge Azcón gave the green light to the draft new energy law of Aragon. The law on emergency measures in terms of energy will be voted on in plenary next December, in accordance with the deadlines given by the Aragonese president in the Debate on the state of Aragon, that the Law be approved before the end of the year.
After the Government Council which was held early this Monday, the Vice-President and Minister of the Economy, Justice and the Presidency, Sea cowboyoutlined the general lines of this new law, which, according to him, will bring “legal certainty to the sector”.
This new law has as a precedent the one recently annulled by the Constitutional Court and which the previous executive of Javier Lambán had approved by decree-law a few months before the elections. The Constitutional Court considered the extraordinary urgency for which the case had been handled to be unjustified.
Vaquero argued that this “rapid response” was necessary to cover the “regulatory void» caused by the cancellation of Decree 1/2023 promoting the energy transition and local consumption in Aragon after the Constitutional Court did not appreciate the reasons of extraordinary and urgent necessity that were invoked for its approval.
The vice-president assured that the new text aims to “recover” the canceled decree-law, which is retained “around 80%” as she estimated, “by adapting the 20 articles mentioned by the TC for invasion of state powers.
Keys to the energy law of Aragon
In the nine chapters of the law, measures are proposed to promoteself-consumption and regulation energy communities, as well as the creation of a Aragonese Energy Solidarity Fund.
The fundamental objective of this fund, according to Vaquero, is “to channel the reinvestment in the territories concerned by the production facilities of a substantial part of the income obtained by the environmental taxes autonomous regions which impose such conditions.
A new energy plan
Another chapter is intended for the regulation of priority projects and investments with associated renewable production, as a particular modality of plans and projects of general interest in Aragon, a “administrative simplification», expressed the vice-president, who will follow the line set by the previous Executive for the projects thus identified.
The project also incorporates the recommendations unanimously adopted by the Commission of Inquiry into Renewable Energies of the Cortes last June. For this reason, the “planning» assured that it will be “one of the main axes of the territory’s energy policy”.
“The law will also promote the participation process in the preparation of the energy plan”, said Vaquero, who hopes that it will replace the one that expired for the period 2013-2020.
This new energy plan will include, among other things, a land use planning of renewable energies in Aragon which weighs the environmental, landscape, agricultural, cultural, urban and territorial impacts that may be involved, either by limiting their implementation in certain areas, as in the case of reservoirs, or by reserving them for their acceleration .
In this sense, the bill also envisages the creation of the Permanent Energy Forumas an administrative body composed of public and private agents participating in the energy field, with consultative functions of the Autonomous Administration, coinciding with one of the investiture commitments of the President of the Government of Aragon.
Further regulation
In the last part of the legal text, it is worth highlighting the incorporation of a transitional provision which covers all ongoing procedures initiated within the framework the validity of Decree-Law 1/2023with the aim of allowing its continuation or resumption in order to continue the application of the canceled regulations.
