Green recovery packages for a post-Covid-19 world: a lesson from the collapse of Spanish wind farms in the past financial crisis

Abstract

Governments are implementing massive stimulus fiscal packages to mitigate the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus disease. If policymakers want to stimulate the economy through renewable energy investments, policies must focus on financing as the key priority. This is the lesson we draw from the Spanish wind farms in the past financial crisis. Using an economic approach to the drivers of external finance within the backdrop of Spanish windfarms, this work employs a dataset of 318 projects commissioned throughout 2006–2013. The main conclusion from this study is that the financial crisis of 2008 changed the behaviour of Spanish financial institutions towards renewable projects. The pre-crisis period was a time when costly ventures were prone to a higher debt leverage. Post-crisis times, however, punished these types of projects by curbing their access to financial resources.