The gas trap

After weeks of a strong heat wave that has set record temperatures both on land and at sea, we cannot begin this editorial without making a new call for the urgent need to decarbonise and abandon fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal); this will only be possible if we achieve a rapid deployment of renewables. We need to face this collective challenge, a challenge not without tensions, with great responsibility and far-sightedness. Renewables are not thriving as fast as they should, but they are evolving. Advanced technology and increasingly lower generation costs allow us to be optimistic and believe in the feasibilityof rapidly deploying renewables. We now need to get our act together and reach an agreement. 
 
Current geopolitical challenges have given gas a new lease of life. Gas is not a clean energy, as we have been led to believe for decades. On the contrary, it is a dirty, fossil fuel and a non-renewable energy that, like oil and coal, will also have to be replaced with renewable energies. In Spain and neighbouring countries, the recovery of large gas infrastructure projects has been put on the agenda; projects such as Midcat that would send gas to the centre of Europe across the Pyrenees, or the construction of an undersea pipeline to connect Barcelona with Livorno, in Italy, at a cost of billions of euro.
 
The construction of this new gas infrastructure and the need to amortise the multi-billion-euro investment it represents condemns us to consume dirty, fossil, non-renewable energy for many more years than our atmosphere can cope with. It is imperative to stop these projects if we are to meet the carbon reduction targets set by the European Union. Achieving this will require demonstrating that we are able to deploy renewable energy quickly and effectively, as it is clear that these new gas infrastructure projects would not be on the table if we had sufficient renewable energy installed or expected to be installed.

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