The Employment, Industry, and Commerce Council of the Canary Islands Government has published three grant bids in the official bulletin, for a total of 2,941,673 Euros, and whose objective is the improvement of energy efficiency and the promotion of renewable energies in the archipelago. Close to two million Euros will be directed to installations of low-temperature thermo solar energy.
The first bids contemplates grants directed to low-temperature thermo solar energy installations, and will involve an investment of 1,970,733 Euros, which will be conceded by way of the “IDEA Renewable Energies Plan”. The maximum grant percentage will be limited to 37% of the reference cost of the installation, with a maximum grant limit of 120,000 Euros. The second proposal is directed to renewable energy installations.
In this offer, grants of 509,292 Euros will be given by way of the “Renewable Energies and Energy Savings” and the “IDEA Renewable Energies Plan” projects. In general, the maximum grant level will be 40% of the eligible cost, up to a maximum grant of 60,000 euros.
According to the council, in this way, amongst others, efforts in the biomass, photovoltaic solar energy, wind, and mixed isolated wind-photovoltaic sectors, or installations for the storage, management, prior treatments, and anaerobic digestion systems, and (heat/cold) energy-advantage and/or any type of electricity derived from organic matter susceptible to this treatment, small installations to obtain and use biogas will be subject to grants. This grant system and the first described above will be processed through the Technological Institute of the Canary Islands.
Finally, the Council has instituted grants for the development of activities that favor savings and energy efficiencies in the industrial sector, for a total of 416,648 Euros provided by the “Savings Strategy and Energy Efficiency” project of the Ministry of Industry. The entity which will process these grants will be the Industrial Association of the Canary Islands (Asinca). According to the Government of the Canary Islands, this initiative ‘seeks on one hand to support the economic viability of investments in the industrial sector, in energy savings, with the objective to reach the identified potential energy savings; and, on the other hand, to promote energy audits in the different industrial sectors, in order to determine the potential energy savings, to facilitate the decision-making in savings investment, and to determine “benchmarking” for “improvements and changes in the audited productive processes”.