The ETEKIN Economic Meetings have held their third session discussing the calm and opportunities facing businesses necessary energy transition in which Euskadi goes on board.
The 2024 ETEKIN Economic Meetings concluded today with a conference on the transition energy, held at Itsas Museum Bilbao. Under the title “Energy transition, opportunities and challenges for companies”, Elías Unzueta, General Manager of Engineering at Petronor, and Mikel Amundarain, General Manager of the Basque Energy Agency EVE, shared their views knowledge and views on this subject.
The transition in petrochemicals
Amundarain has pointed out that more than forty years ago, Euskadi began leading the process known today as transition energy: «At that time, energy was linked to the competitiveness and needs of industry; To cope with these difficult times, the government began to promote energy strategies. Today is the challenge decarbonizing the economyThat is to say, an energy strategy cannot be understood without taking this objective into account.
In the same way, the director of EVE has emphasized the need to promote renewable energy sources: “In the coming years we must increase electrification, we must strengthen connections because the current ones are not prepared to absorb the renewable energy that will be produced. And we must be aware that this strengthening of electrification will not be able to cover 100% of our needs. Therefore we will need other energy sources in the future”.
The EVE leader also indicated this the contract for the generation of new electricity comes from Europe. “In Euskadi we have to think carefully about what this means and what strategy it leads us to. What is clear is that we need new projects to deepen ‘strategic autonomy’. We might ask ourselves: what capacity do we have to meet our needs in the face of any problem? That is the challenge.”
For his part, Elías Unzueta spoke about new fuels and Petronor’s transformation process. First, he explained in simple terms what renewable fuels are: «The Renewable fuels are fuels that do not come from fossil fuels; This means that the company is not petroleum-based, but has other products, such as recycled cooking oils or synthetic fuels, that can be used in today’s engines.
In this sense, Unzueta has emphasized that the transition from fossil fuels to renewable fuels takes years and, in the case of Petronor, its commitment and key milestone is the year 2050: “We are mainly focusing on three areas in this transition: on the one hand, the changes and investments we make in our processes to reduce emissions transition energetic; On the other hand, this is how we work our products are renewable fuels.
For example, we create bioproducts (biogasoline and biodiesel) using oils that are waste; and finally, we want to make a strong commitment to hydrogen to create new products over the next twenty years: using hydrogen as energy, directly as a renewable fuel, or using renewable hydrogen to synthesize other products. The latter is our ‘flagship’ project: make synthetic fuels on the path to decarbonization «.
Finally, Unzueta added that these synthetic fuels “will be key to the competitiveness of the industries around us, especially as these synthetic fuels can be used for decarbonizing businesses that are difficult to electrify.
The financial contribution to the energy transition
CaixaBank and Kutxabank participated in the coordination of this last annual session of the ETEKIN Economic Meetings. Estíbaliz Areitio, director of the business area of CaixaBank, emphasized in her speech that “we can contribute a lot from the financial sector because we are an important player in the transition energy. Since 2022, we have mobilized 67 billion euros in sustainable financing. And what we are clear about is that to move faster, we need deeper action. The goal should be electrification and improving energy efficiency«.
Jabier Larrañaga, Director of Business Banking at Kutxabank in the Basque Country, has stated that the transition Energy is one of the most ambitious and powerful local and global challenges, together with the digital challenge: “We are convinced that the decarbonizing our economies It will lead to opportunities for all actors if we direct strategies and investments and promote public-private partnerships in the same direction,” he explained.
The objectives of improving energy efficiency at company level, the need for decarbonization or the determined support for it environmentally friendly sustainable development were some of the topics analyzed during the ETEKIN Economic Meetings.