The Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition (MITECO) has authorised the construction of nearly 25GW of solar PV capacity to be built in Spain.
The combined capacity for solar PV totals 24,870MW and is split across 239 projects. MITECO provided Administrative Construction Authorisations (AAC in Spanish) to a total of 283 renewable power projects, of which solar accounted for 90% of the contracted capacity. The ministry overviews projects with a capacity higher than 50MW or are located in several autonomous regions.
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A total of 428 renewable energy projects initiated the AAC process, meaning 66% were awarded authorisation by MITECO.
All the projects that received a favourable AAC had already received grid access between 31 December 2017 and 25 June 2020, with the deadline for approval due on 25 July 2024, according to the royal law-decree (Real Decreto-ley) 23/2020.
All projects, which received AAC approval, now have three years to be commissioned and will contribute to accelerating Spain’s target to reach 76GW of installed solar PV capacity by 2030. Even though not all projects will come to fruition, it will help boost Spain’s utility-scale capacity additions, which last year totalled 5.6GW of new ground-mount solar. By the end of 2023, the country had installed over 25.5GW of solar PV, and thus will require to add 50GW in the coming years if it aims to reach the targets set in its National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP).
MITECO estimates that all the renewables projects approved this month will require an investment of over €17 billion (US$18.4 billion) and create more than 260,000 jobs for solar PV alone.
Earlier this week, MITECO also published guidance for its renewables and energy storage manufacturing scheme. The ministry will provide €750 million) in funding through Spain’s recovery and resilience plan (PRTR) and aims to incentivise the production of equipment and components for solar panels, batteries and electrolysers, among other technologies.
EPC bottleneck
This is not the first time MITECO has approved solar PV projects in bulk. Last year, 132 projects with a combined capacity of nearly 25GW received favourable environmental decisions. These were projects that had already received grid access between 31 December 2017 and 25 June 2020, with the deadline for environmental approval due on 25 January 2023.
However, shortly after this announcement in January 2023, several players in the industry showed concern about the lack of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) workers to complete these projects.
