The Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade (MITyC) is the Spanish department responsible for proposals and execution in terms of industrial development and innovation, commercial policies, small and medium enterprises, power generation, commercialization and distribution, mining, media, information society and trade.

Regarding this case, the Ministry is devoted to define, establish and make companies in the power sector respect the rules of the game. In the case of RIPRE, we are talking about special rules, regarding only power generation in the Special Regime.

The Special Regime covers different types of electricity production ways, but with an important feature in common: the raw material used is renewable or waste material and/or the manner of producing energy looks for efficiency, effectiveness and low pollution. This means we are talking about bio-mass, cogeneration, urban and other waste materials, solar electricity and so on.

The Special Regime in Spain is born in 2005 thanks to the Renewable Energy Plan 2005-2010. That initiative was really a very important milestone on Spanish Renewable initiatives because it defined several objectives and goals that should be achieved for the next years in order to reach an appropriate level in this field.

We cannot forget also that this initiative wasn't born for the first time in Spain. It was born actually in the arms of European Union, which gave all the countries in the Union at the end of 2001 some policies and recommendations in the White Paper "Energy for the future: renewable sources of energy" and the Directive 2001/77/CE of the European Parliament and of the Council on the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in the internal electricity market.

Even if we think backward, all this movement was promoted at the beginning by a so many times mentioned treatment, we are talking about the Kyoto Protocol. Which give the European Union and many other countries some advices about the use of renewable sources in order to reduce pollution, energy consumption, sustainability...

However, the result of these important rules, at different levels, wasn't that expected. And, although many enterprises begun quickly acting in the renewable market, more regulations were needed in terms of technical, economical and political aspects in Spain.

This way, Spanish legislators decided it would be necessary for power generators in the Special Regime to give some information in order to register and control their behavior in the sector, and also to be authorized to play the game.

This information, according to the Royal Decree 661/2007 from 25 May would be sent by plants to regional governments and they should also send it to MITyC periodically in order to create a central Registry of Power Generation Plants in the Special Regime, which stored all the information of the Special Regime in Spain. That way RIPRE was born.

Policy Context

The Protocol of Kyoto was initially adopted at the end of 1997 and entered into force at the beginning of 2005. Nowadays almost 200 States have signed and ratified it.

This protocol allowed many countries, including Member States of European Union, were aware of an incredible growth in energy consumption and, due to the way of producing it, a more incredible growth in pollution.

Because of that, many countries compromised to change the way they were acting in this sense. One of the most important measures was to increase the strength and presence of renewable energies in their respective countries, but without forgetting the need of reducing the energy consumption.

On 2001, the European Union gave policies and recommendations for its Member States through the White Paper "Energy for de future: renewable sources of energy" and also with the Directive 2001/77/CE of the European Parliament and of the Council on the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in the internal electricity market.

The proposals of European Union in this matter have been adopted by Spain through two important Royal Decrees. RD 436/2004, which was in force between 2004 and 2006 and RD 661/2007, which entered in force on June 2007.

Thanks to this legal framework and, of course, to RIPRE, the application that allows the communication between Administrations (regional ones and national), Spanish Registry of Power Generation Plants in the Special Regime has now (July 2010) information about almost 60 000 installations, which is a completely success considering the registry has been operational for only 20 months.

Description of target users and groups

RIPRE has been designed to allow Regional Administrations to communicate MITyC the information relative to the Special Regime according to the instructions announced by the Royal Decree 661/2007.

In that regulation, the legislator has given the order to Regional Administrations to require from electricity producers in the Special Regime information about the production and other important issues for the market.

But the job of workers in Regional Administrations doesn't end only with that. They also have to send all that information to MITyC.

MITyC, for its part, will maintain the registry and allow to access and manage information not only to their own workers and workers from Regional Administrations, but also authorized workers from other Organisms as CNE (National Energy Commision) or OMEL (Electricity Iberic Market Operator).

In the case of CNE and OMEL, the ability given by RIPRE to consult all the relevant information about every participant in Special Regime sector is essential, since this information is used to control the market and, what is more important for companies, determine the price of electricity and bonus or other complements paid in the Special Regime.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

RIPRE is a system that enables collaboration and communication between different Administrations (Regional Administrations and MITyC) and also other organisms has CNE or OMEL involved in the Special Regime market.

Every kind of user has its own profile in the system and that allows them control the actions they can carry out in the system. This way, RIPRE distinguishes elementarily between three kinds of users: workers from Regional Administrations, workers from MITyC and workers from organisms as CNE or OMEL.

Regional Administrations workers send information stored in their own registries and can check the content of the registry related to their region.

MITyC workers are responsible for the correctness of the registry, manage the information, and obtain statistics related to the different technologies in the market, the amount of power produced in one, several or even all regions in Spain, and so on.

Regarding CNE and OMEL workers, they can only look up into the information in order to make their own work, but they cannot modify it.

Technology solution

RIPRE is a web application that allows the personal of Regional Administrations to send the information stored in their own Registries to the National Registry managed by MITyC. This application also allows dealing with this information, modifying it, obtaining statistics and even exporting results to formats as Excel.

RIPRE controls the access by login/password or electronic certificate depending on the possibilities of its users. In the case of electronic certificate, the information send by Regional Administrations is signed using the standard XadES to warrantee integrity, authenticity and non repudiation.

No matter if access is by login/password or electronic certificate, the communication with the application is established always through a secure channel thanks to SSL protocol, which warrantees confidentiality in the communication.

The year 2009 was a very stressing year for the application. Only during those 12 months almost 57-000 plants were added to the system. That was the reason why the process of sending information from Regional Administrations allows sending information contained in Excel documents under a specific format.

This information is automatically processed by RIPRE and added into a Pre-Registry. The content added is evaluated by MITyC workers and, if everything is ok, the information sent is added immediately to the Registry, what allows the process to be a very effective and safe way of filling the Registry.

According to Spanish Law 11/2007, every sending is also archived in the Electronic Registry of MITyC, which gives the sender and Electronic Receipt, which warrantees the sending was made, and the receiver has indeed been the MITyC.

Technology choice: Proprietary technology

Main results, benefits and impacts

In 2008, renewable energies produced more than 7,300 million of Euros in Spain, what was the 0.67% of Gross National Product. This contribution grew from previous year in more than 35%.

The objective in Spain is to achieve in 2020 that the 20% of total energy consumed in Spain is produced by plants under the Special Regime. And being honest, we are in a good road to achieve it.

Sustainable energies entailed the inversion of a 6.6% of sector Gross National Product in Research and Development in 2008. The development of the sector also created in that year more than 120 000 jobs.

These numbers allow Spain to be the leader all over the world in photovoltaic and to occupy a very relevant position in the rest of the Special Regime technologies.

Of course, it wouldn't have been possible if companies hadn't acted like they did. But, it is fair to recognize also the importance of RIPRE, especially if we consider the addition of more than 57 000 plants during 2009, and the more than 74 000 modifications and new inclusions that have taken place during the first six months of 2010.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

In no more than 20 months since RIPRE is operative, almost 59 000 plants have been added to the Registry, which means 3 000 plants per month on average.

It's also important not only consider the addition, but also modifications and consults of information. Near 150 000 registries have been modified since the application was released.

The application is intensively used and consulted every day by its users and it has allowed ending with the movement of big amount of paper and also with the slowness associated to the traditional way in which Administrations communicate each other.

Now the communication is faster, more automated and that permits the workers be more effective and do a really better work.

Lessons learnt

RIPRE is a really successful case in the sector thanks to use Information and Communication Technologies in service of civil servants and the correct operation of Administrations, not only in terms of communication between them, but also in terms of internal information management.

RIPRE has followed the indications given by Law 11/2007 concerning the use of information technologies and electronic channel for internal procedures and also for communication between Administrations. And, of course, the results have given the reason to this legal proposal.

In addition, RIPRE has been the first project in the area. So next developments have used common components made by the application, which have meant a considerable reduction in effort and, of course, better tested modules in connecting applications with services as Common Repository, Certificate Validating Service, Electronic Registry and other common components deployed at MITyC.

The fact of having prepared robust and well-formed components have been essential in order to reuse existing modules and services in later applications.

Scope: National, Regional (sub-national)