Danish energy company Ørsted is establishing an onshore renewables business in Spain as it looks to participate in the country’s auctions and develop solar, wind and energy storage projects.
Through collaborations with four companies – Glide Energy, Rolwind, ARBA Energías Renovables and Ereda – Ørsted initially aims to develop renewables plants that will allow it to take part in upcoming and submit bids for rights to develop a “multi-gigawatt pipeline” of solar and wind across Spain.
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Ørsted’s longer-term ambition is to develop solar, wind and energy storage projects that can be commercialised through either auctions or corporate power purchase agreements.
With Spain aiming to source 70% of its electricity from renewables by 2030, Ørsted said the market is “an absolute front runner in the green energy transition and an attractive market for developers”.
Spain added 3.8GW of PV last year, taking its total installed solar capacity up to 17.9GW, according to research from trade body SolarPower Europe.
The country’s latest renewables auction took place last October and awarded 866MW of solar capacity. Another auction was due to be held in April, but has been postponed.
Having recently established a team and office in Madrid, Ørsted said its four new partners have extensive experience in greenfield project development and a complementary geographic footprint.
“Our new partners complement Ørsted’s experience with scaling an onshore business with a strong development expertise and local knowledge of the Spanish market,” said Neil O’Donovan, who was appointed CEO of the company’s onshore business unit last year.
With an ambition of reaching 17.5GW of deployed onshore renewables capacity globally by 2030, Ørsted completed work on its 227MWac Muscle Shoals PV plant in the US last year.
