Ni Ben Magec Ecologistas en Acción says anything. The pressure to close the gas passage of Totisa Holding was unanimous, with everyone abstaining regarding the Turkish energy ship. The debate on energy emergency in the Canary Islands has taken an unexpected turn. While the Turkish multinational Karadeniz Powership maintains a deathly silence regarding the impact of its electricity generation barges, it is the Government of the Canary Islands that has assumed the role of principal supporter of the project at the port of Las Palmas (Coalición Canaria). This attitude has unleashed a storm of doubts within the port sectors of Las Palmas: Why is the public administration doing the lobbying that should correspond to a private company? Another matter is that the company has not been ‘touched’ formally by the Canary Executive, which, for preventive purposes, can shift responsibility to the Port of Las Palmas (CC) for refusing to support the supposed project. The experience of Puerto Viejo, in Azua (Dominican Republic), serves as a disquieting mirror for the archipelago. There, the same barges began operating among three protected areas, emitting dense smoke that affected the health of the local residents. In that case, the environmental license has been harshly criticized for overlooking constitutional laws and fishing regulations, prioritizing the use of Bunker 6, one of the most polluting and cheapest fuels, over natural gas. The PP has established a theory with the energy patch plan: energy confinement in Gran Canaria or blackout from the port of Las Palmas if support is not given to the vessel. The port business associations of Las Palmas will not oppose it. The silence of Karadeniz and the voice of the Executive It is anomalous in the business environment that a company with a multi-million contract exceeding 200 million euros, which would be negotiated under technical exclusivity, does not explain itself to defend its sustainability or social benefits. Instead, it is the Canary Executive that insists on the ‘extreme necessity’ of these platforms to avoid blackouts, minimizing the environmental risks already denounced by experts in the Caribbean. In Azua, Dominican Republic, the director of the Institute of Lawyers for the Protection of the Environment, Euren Cuevas, is blunt: ‘They don’t care about health, they want to make money’. The constant noise, the vibrations, and the discharge of hot water into the sea are realities that the company has not denied with data, allowing local governments to bear the political cost of defending the project. A dangerous mirror for the islands Dominican fishermen are already reporting a decrease in fish catch, and residents of the Los Negros area suffer night sweats due to nitrogen and sulfur emissions. If this model is transferred to the port of Las Palmas under the umbrella of ’emergency’, the archipelago faces the same dilemma: Health and sustainability or high-cost environmental electrical patches? The question hangs in the air of official offices: What interests lead the regional Government to act as a shield for a multinational that doesn’t even bother to explain how it will protect the Canary ecosystem? The ‘crime scene’ environmental described in the Dominican Republic is today the warning that Canary social platforms use to demand transparency in a management that seems to favor the Turkish balance sheet more than the well-being of the islands.
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