EIB supports Spain-France energy link - Invests €1.6 billion for underwater project between the countries
The European Investment Bank will support a planned energy interconnector between Spain and France with an investment of €1.6 billion. The decision comes after the governments of Spain and Portugal requested EU help to improve their energy networks following a major outage in April.
Spain and Portugal's weak electricity connections to the rest of Europe were put under the spotlight by the unprecedented blackouts in the countries. Experts and officials said they could have been less severe if the Iberian Peninsula had more interconnections to exchange power with other countries.
The EIB, the European Union's lending arm, said it would support the Bay of Biscay interconnector through loans to Spain's and France's power system operators, Red Electrica and RTE, which aim to launch the 400-kilometer project in 2028.
The underwater connection would increase the amount of energy that France and Spain can exchange, from 2.8 gigawatts to 5 gigawatts.
The causes of the Iberian blackout are still being investigated. Following the incident, the governments of Spain and Portugal asked the EU last month to intervene to ensure new interconnection projects with France go ahead, a letter previously reported by Reuters showed.
Work to strengthen an existing interconnector between France and Spain is expected to be completed this year. French company RTE has also assessed two additional links to Spain over the Pyrenees mountain range, but noted that the beneficiaries of the projects would be located outside France.
The Iberian Peninsula has only 3% of the electricity capacity connected to neighboring countries, far below the EU target for countries to reach 15% by 2030.
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