The irrational planning of renewables
The Balearic Islands, and Mallorca in particular, face a key moment in defining their present and future in terms of energy and land use. The energy transition is an urgent challenge, yes, but what should be an opportunity to democratize energy, reduce emissions, and protect the land is becoming a threat to the very territory they claim to want to preserve. This attack, in short, adds to the disfigurement of rural land, which, through amnesties and reclassifications, is valued more as investment land than as a vital ecological asset, which it is. The proposal to delimit Priority Development Zones (PDZs) by the Mallorcan Council is a clear example of this: irrational planning, disconnected from the island's energy, territorial, and environmental reality.
The Renewables Yes, But Not Like This! platform has been denouncing for years that the massive implementation of renewables cannot be promoted without territorial planning that addresses not only energy criteria but also social, agricultural, environmental, and climate criteria. Far from it, we are faced with a hastily implemented zoning system geared toward the massive deployment of photovoltaic power plants on rural land, while ignoring the possibility—and the obligation—of utilizing anthropized areas, rooftops, industrial warehouses, public infrastructure, or degraded urban areas.
The Territorial Plan of Mallorca, in its fourth amendment, proposes more than 16,000 hectares of rural land as a ZDP for photovoltaic energy, and more than 24,000 hectares should be added for wind power, an issue that has not been present in either the energy, political, or social debate. This area of more than 40,000 hectares of rural island territory is intended to be considered a priority for the implementation of renewable energy, when the priority should be its preservation, that of rural land, for primary uses, not for industrial uses, which are photovoltaic plants. Because a plant is not an infrastructure with a designated use or one that requires a declaration of general interest. A plant is an energy plant and, as a result, an industrial activity on rural land, an activity, therefore, historically prohibited on rural land. Why else are these projects declared as strategic industrial projects through another means? If they're industrial, territorial planning makes it clear that they can't be implemented on rural land, and if they're not industrial, then it doesn't make sense to declare them strategic industrial projects. Right?
The proposal from the Council, which is responsible for land use planning, ignores this determination, marking areas located exclusively in rural areas on a map to be considered priorities for development. From the platform, we have repeatedly stated that rural land should be the last option: neither a priority nor a strategic one.
Law 10/2019 on climate change and energy transition establishes clear criteria for the delimitation of ZDPs: already transformed areas must be prioritized, grid capacity and real energy needs must be taken into account, and the landscape, biodiversity, and agricultural land must be protected. None of these criteria have been respected. On the contrary, the Consell's proposal places the ZDPs far from consumption areas—such as Palma and tourist areas—and concentrates them in the Pla and Raiguer regions, towns with lower energy demand but with more available rural land and less social resistance. The result is a fragmentation of the territory, a direct impact on areas of high agricultural, ecological, and landscape value, and the absolute marginalization of local communities. A decentralized and participatory model based on self-consumption and energy communities is abandoned, ceding all prominence to large industrial operators, who, one way or another, end up having every opportunity to establish themselves on rural land. A land where all political intentions are aimed at further razing it, perverting its proper uses and replacing them with others: tourism, residential, energy...
How is it possible that not even the roofs of industrial estates, public parking lots, educational centers, or healthcare facilities are included as priority development areas? Why is only rural land considered a useful space for energy generation, while high-consumption urban areas that could lead to energy self-sufficiency are left untouched? Why do regulations facilitate the processing of large-scale projects but block self-consumption projects, relegating them to municipal planning?
The protection of rural land should be an island priority. This land is not just landscape or farmland: it is a capacity for resilience, food sovereignty, ecological connectivity... Reducing it to an area available for energy, tourism, real estate, or residential businesses is a grave strategic error. We are heading toward a supposed decarbonization while destroying the ecosystems that protect us from climate change.
Renewables should be part of the solution, but if implemented this way, they become a more serious and significant part of the problem. The energy transition will only be fair if it respects the land that must sustain it. And in Mallorca, land is a scarce, finite asset, laden with values that cannot be mortgaged for the immediate profit linked to the energy transition business. The fight for renewables cannot be incompatible with the defense of the territory. On the contrary: they must go hand in hand.
