In a statement made before the start of an Informal Energy Council in Seville, the Spanish Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade, Miguel Sebastián, expressed his desire to reach agreement on a number of specific initiatives to 'move ahead with the common energy market'.

According to Miguel Sebastián, establishing a common energy market is 'good for the European economy, for businesses and for consumers', and also aims to provide 'increased security of supply and, naturally, further strengthen our commitment to renewable energies and reducing CO2 emissions'.

In the opinion of the Spanish minister, a key element in achieving these goals are energy exchanges between countries 'because a single energy market cannot exist without interconnections'. He also stressed that 'interconnections provide an essential back-up for renewable energies, a weak point of these kind of energies being their lack of ready availability and easy management'.

Miguel Sebastián added that 'interconnections are at the heart of European policy for two reasons: because they strengthen the single market and because they provide scope for developing renewable energies, which is our mayor commitment as a continent'.

On the subject of achieving the necessary agreement between European countries on this issue, the minister pointed out that 'we will soon be seeing a new European Commissioner, although the outgoing Commissioner has done an excellent job, and we believe that with the help of the new Commissioner, and with the discussions taking place in Member States, we can achieve good results in the official Council of Ministers to be held in June in Brussels'.

With regard to low carbon technologies, another issue being discussed at the informal Council of energy ministers, Miguel Sebastián stressed that 'we must commit ourselves to a number of different technologies because, just as we must have various sources of energy, with renewable energies we cannot be tied to one specific technology'. He added that Spain is committed to land-based wind energy as well as photovoltaic and thermosolar energy, while the UK is using marine-based wind energy and carbon capture and storage. 'We will probably have to continue to look into other new sources of renewable energies which are still at the development stage,' he added.