The Ministry of Ecological Transition (MITECO) in Spain has updated its National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) with an increased target for solar PV of 76GW by 2030.
The new draft – which has been put to public consultation until 4 September 2023 – nearly doubles the previous target for installed solar capacity that was set at 39GW. From the updated 76GW target, 19GW will come from self-consumption, while the country seeks to reach a total installed electricity capacity of 214GW by 2030.
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At the end of 2022, the country had nearly 20GW of total solar PV capacity installed and added nearly 3.7GW of ground-mounted capacity in 2022 alone.
The previous NECP was released in 2020, however since then the European Union has increased its own targets through an updated REPowerEU strategy that seeks 740GW of solar PV by 2030, the “Fit for 55” package that targets a 42.5% share of renewable energy by 2030 or the need to accelerate Europe’s energy independence.
Other aspects outlined in the recent draft is that Spain aims to reach 81% of electricity generation through renewable energy by the end of the decade. Energy storage however barely changed its numbers, as the Spanish government only seeks 2GW more than the previous target – as covered by our sister-site Energy-storage.news – to a total of 22GW by 2030, while green hydrogen is poised to have its capacity of electrolysers nearly treble from its 4GW currently expected to a target of 11GW.
The current Spanish government expects to submit this updated version to the European Commission by June 2024. The draft can be read here (in Spanish).
Furthermore, during a Minister’s Cabinet meeting this week, the Spanish government officially introduced the renewable energy communities, giving a six-month extension to renewable projects still seeking a construction permit. This gives a relief to the renewables industry in Spain as many projects were poised not to get a construction permit before the 25 July 2023 deadline.
Rafael Benjumea, president of the Spanish solar association UNEF, welcomed the extension as “great news for the industry” which saw the due date as a threat to the viability of the projects, at a time when Spain started to face bottleneck issues to find contractors to build the more than 25GW of solar PV projects that received a positive environmental process earlier this year.