The European Investment Bank will back a planned power interconnector between Spain and France with an investment of 1.6 billion euros ($1.84 billion), it said on Monday, after Spain and Portugal’s governments sought EU help to improve their power links following a huge blackout in April.
Spain and Portugal’s poor electricity connections to the rest of Europe were thrown into the spotlight by the countries’ unprecedented power outage, which experts and officials said could have been less severe if the Iberian Peninsula had more interconnectors to exchange power with other countries.
The EIB, the European Union’s lending arm, said it would support the Bay of Biscay interconnector via loans to Spain and France’s power system operators, Red Electrica and RTE, who aim to launch the 400-kilometre project in 2028.
The subsea link would increase the amount of power that France and Spain can exchange, from 2.8 gigawatts to 5 gigawatts.
“EIB support for the France-Spain electricity interconnection will be key to ensuring that the Iberian Peninsula is no longer an energy island,” EIB Group President Nadia Calvino said in a statement.
The causes of the Iberian outage are still being investigated.
Following the blackout, Spain and Portugal’s governments asked the EU last month to step in to ensure new interconnection projects with France move ahead, a letter previously reported by Reuters showed.
Works to strengthen an existing interconnector between France and Spain are expected to wrap this year. France’s RTE has also assessed two additional interconnections with Spain over the Pyrenees, but noted that the projects’ beneficiaries would be located outside of France.
Thomas Veyrenc, board member at France’s RTE, said on Monday that the Bay of Biscay project would increase the solidarity between France and Spain. Beatriz Corredor, chair of Red Electrica’s parent company, Redeia, said the countries should also press ahead with the planned interconnections through the Pyrenees.
Iberia has just 3% of its electricity capacity connected to neighbouring countries, far below the EU’s target for countries to reach 15% by 2030.
($1 = 0.8675 euro)
(Reporting by Kate Abnett in Luxembourg)
