Genesis and Development of Wind Power Sector in Galicia (1995-2010): Institutional Framework, Economic and Enrironmental Effects

This thesis contributes information about the wind sector in Galicia between 1995 and 2010. In these years the renewable energies obtained a major protagonism inside the energetic world panorama motivated between other reasons, for the increasing demand of available energy, especially electrical. The wind power stands out in this field as supply source of electricity. In the investigation they were considered to be the contributions of the institucionalist economy, of the ecological economy and of the economy of the energy. Thanks to this the paper distinguished from Galicia turns out to be more understandable in order that Spain occupies one of the positions of international leadership in the wind sector. Equally a comparative analysis was done between different producing countries, which allowed to establish the features of a possible vector the director for the classification of the sector. The investigation is formulated so much from a retrospective as market approach, so that they could have understood the steps followed in the configuration of the wind sector in Galicia, both in the normative area and in the development of the installed power or the economic and social effects, at the time that they tried to determine the elements to correct each other of a sector wanting to be obtained in the future by other conditions different from now existing. There was detected that the wind Galician development did to itself without considering the participation of all the implied agents, since it is the case of the owners of the areas, and without gathering a widely accepted criterion that allows to establish a valuation of these areas. An effort is realized in the thesis for doing concrete offers that settle this fault, and allow to establish mechanisms of calculation of the economic value of the busy areas. The regulation of the wind sector in Galicia took form of three decrees and a law, being analyzed of detailed form, being marked you differ and common lagoons, where it highlights a continuous proclamation of an environmental defense that then does not seem to be applied. On the other hand, the managerial associations defend the strength of the sector in the creation of direct and indirect employment but there do not exist official statistics that demonstrate it, and the information offered by the different sources is very unlike. To know the real dimension of the direct and indirect employment is one of the principal aims of the thesis, results being obtained that show a labor dimension that differs substantially the one that repeats the managerial and governmental information. The doubts are not minor on the reversion of of the benefits in Galicia, since the companies that are to take part in the wind contests it looks like that they are the big energetic groups of Spain, fact that does not guarantee at first such a reversion. To form the network of companies and the origin of the capital that is behind the promotion of the wind farms constitutes other one of the aims distinguished from the thesis of doctorate. On having done it there was stated a strong presence of the bank Spanish capital and of financial international groups and, in many minor measure, of managerial Spanish and, groups especially, Galicians. This information turns out to be totally unpublished in the literature on the sector. The universe of the investigation was the set of companies and parks that form the wind sector in Galician, as one any subject to the enclosed institutional frame, in which stands out the existence of a few political state directives of energetic planning, the exclusive competitions of the autonomous community of Galicia in his energetic planning in the area of the renewable energies, and the survival of a form of property specific, the local mounts in common hand, not existing in other regions of Spain, and recognized and regulated for law.