The current Secretary of State for Energy and Teresa Ribera’s right-hand woman, Sara Aagesen (Madrid, 1976), will replace the future executive vice-president of the new European Commission as third vice-president of the government and minister of Ecological Transition and Demography. Challenge, as La Vanguardia advances and sources from the Executive confirm to elDiario.es.
The appointment should materialize when next week the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg ratifies the appointment of Ribera, which the Spanish PP tried to torpedo until the last moment.
This movement is reminiscent of the election of Carlos Corpus as Nadia Calviño’s replacement at the Ministry of Economic Affairs after her departure for the European Investment Bank (EIB). The difference is that Aagesen, who as a body does not have political weight within the PSOE, will retain the vice-presidency at the head of a key portfolio.
The current Secretary of State is Ribera’s natural replacement. Aagesen accompanied the head of this super-minister for much of his career. The last four years, since January 2020, as Secretary of State for Energy, a position for which she was appointed in 2020, replacing the recently deceased José Domínguez Abascal.
A few weeks earlier, Aagesen, then a simple advisor to the ministry, already stood out during one of the sessions of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP25) 2019 which had to be improvised in Madrid. The more than four years she spent at the head of the Energy Secretariat make her the person who has held this position the longest since the start 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 self-consumption and renewable energies, during the turbulent years in which the Executive launched the so-called social shield to protect the most vulnerable with the appearance of the pandemic, and in which 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 in 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.
A negotiator for the Spanish delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, Aagesen was a member of the advisory board of the Climate Technology Center and Network ( CTCN), sponsored by the United Nations. the United Nations Environment Organization and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, in addition to participating as a national expert in various working groups of the European Commission and in the monitoring and evaluation of the development of Community regulations.
In 2018, she was appointed advisor to the cabinet of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, where she is responsible for the orientation, coordination and definition of the draft National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) 2021-2030 and the Long – Term Strategy 2050. He must now direct policies from the top of the ministry to achieve the ambitious objectives of the PNIEC included in the last update sent to Brussels last September.
