Shining a spotlight on Iberian renewable energy advances

Nurturing solar growth in Spain

Spain stands out as a major European hotspot for solar PV, due to its proactive energy policies and competitiveness in both utility scale and distributed generation. In 2023, Spain’s cumulative solar PV capacity surpassed 25 GW. On 24 September 2024, the Spanish government approved the update of the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC 2023-30) through Decree 986/2024, with ambitious plans to reach more than 76 GW of solar PV by 2030; this includes 19 GW of decentralised solar PV, up from 7 GW in 2023.

The growth of the distributed generation solar market has been fuelled by government support. In June 2021, Spain's Royal Decree 477/2021 allocated €450 million in grants, distributed among three sectors: €200 million for residential, tertiary, and public administration; €150 million for industry and agriculture; and €100 mil-lion for the commercial sector.

Additionally, the Royal Decree-Law 8/2023, effective from 29 December 2023, introduced new measures to boost self-consumption, including the release of 10% of access capacity for self-consumption to all transmission grid nodes and limiting on-demand access requests in the transmission grid. The law also grants freedom of amortisation for self-consumption facilities, further stimulating interest in solar and energy storage solutions across Spain. Moreover, the simplification of administrative barriers to self-consumption and the removal of working permits for these projects across the country, except in the Basque region, have also stimulated significant interest in self-consumption in Spain.

Portugal gaining ground in solar

Renewable power sources supplied a record 72% of Portugal's electricity in the first 10 months of this year, up by 1.9% over the same period last year, or 2.3% when correcting for the effects of temperature and number of working days.

On 1 October 2024, the Portuguese government released a revised version of the National Energy and Climate Plan 2030 (Plano Nacional de Energia e Clima para 2030 or PNEC). The updated strategy targets 86% of the country's electricity to be renewable by 2025, increasing to 93% by 2030.

The revised plan also aims for more than 20.8 GW of operational solar PV systems by 2030, of which 5.7 GW will be decentralised, reflecting CAGR of 20% from 2025 targets.

The Portuguese solar market's most rapidly expanding segment is small scale self-consumption installations, which have grown by over threefold in the past five years thanks to financial incentives enabling project owners to use electricity without paying grid taxes and levies, which is particularly advantageous for large energy consumers.

To encourage distributed production and self-consumption of energy from renewable sources, a legal framework was created in Portugal that enables individual self-consumption; encourages energy communities; and supports the creation of renewable energy communities. The legal enshrinement of these figures allows citizens, companies, and other public and private entities to produce, consume, share, store and sell energy produced from renewable energy sources, thus actively participating in the energy transition.

Informing transition through experience

With Spain and Portugal in our sights, there is rapid growth of projects with ground mount schemes near industrial areas. After all, the irradiation of the Iberia region and the significant potential for distributed energy, as well as the favourable regulatory landscape, make the market a hugely attractive growth opportunity.

AMPYR is already working with developers and customers in the region to help fast track solar ambitions through strategic investments. The rules on CSCs and RECs provide us with a great opportunity to develop large schemes that provide the majority of their clean energy to the local community, whether it is commercial sites or residential consumers living in the neighbourhood. Such schemes are being embraced by industrial customers as a way of accessing low cost renewable generation, and by local communities who can share these benefits. We are excited to start bringing some of these projects to market, helping Portugal and Spain deliver on their ambitious net-zero targets.

The phenomenal growth of distributed energy across Iberia coupled with the region’s commitment to robust targets for solar adoption over the next decade are powerful indicators of the potential of renewables to delivery substantial benefits not just for the environment, but for energy resilience, cost savings and the bottom line.

Events like Solar & Storage Live help put the expert team at the heart of conversations around the latest ideas, initiatives and innovations that will drive projects forward. Through the company’s involvement in projects in Spain and Portugal, it can harness the opportunity to bring ideas and the best practice from the region to guide solar innovation and adoption in the UK now and in the future.

You can read the first part of this article here.

For more news and technical articles from the global renewable industry, read the latest issue of Energy Global magazine.

Energy Global's Autumn 2024 issue

Dive into the latest renewable energy insights in the Autumn issue of Energy Global, out now! The issue starts with an insightful guest comment from Cristiano Spillati, Managing Director at Limes Renewable Energy where he discusses the need for European renewable energy suppliers to accelerate the rate of the energy transition. This is followed by a regional report from Cornwall Insights on the battery energy storage industry in Australia. This issue explores key topics including offshore wind subsea cables, offshore wind support vessels, digitalisation, wind turbine components, and more!

Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/special-reports/18112024/shining-a-spotlight-on-iberian-renewable-energy-advances/