Impact of the renewable energy generation on the Iberian electricity market

The continuous growth of environmental awareness, as well as high oil prices has increased interest in energy issues. The prospect of clean electrical energy generation has been a strategic priority of many governments that has driven to a massive investment on the renewable energy, mainly wind power. Although the process of generating electricity from renewable sources does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and does not suffer from depletion, the variability of the power source introduces a volatility effect that affects the required electricity amount to be produced by conventional fossil fuel power plants. Addressing the cost of electricity production, we briefly evaluate the total social cost of electricity generation for the different technologies by using a life cycle cost assessment. We focus the analysis on the Iberian market, by presenting some results considering historical data, as well as some future projections.