The Ministry of Energy Transition and Autonomous Communities has issued a favourable environmental impact assessment for TotalEnergies' project to build 48 solar energy production plants in Spain, with a total installed capacity of three gigawatts.

Most will be built in the Madrid Region, where there will be a total of 1.9 gigawatts of installed capacity. The rest will be shared between Murcia (more than 350 megawatts), Castilla-La Mancha (more than 300 megawatts), Andalusia (263 megawatts) and Aragón (around 150 megawatts).

Electricity demand
The 48 new plants will be capable of producing more than 6,000 gigawatt hours of clean energy per year, which is equivalent to the electricity used by almost four million people in one year. From the moment they come on stream, and throughout their lifetime, they will displace 50 million tonnes of atmospheric carbon emissions. Most will come into operation in early 2024.

The French company will be offering training to local people to enable them to work on the construction, operation and maintenance of the plants. The firm has also put a number of offsetting measures in place, including tagging birds to monitor their behaviour, leasing an additional 400 hectares for conservation work, and allocating 1.5% of the plants' output to apply discounts to local residents' electricity bills.

A giant step forward
Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné explained, “With two million residential and business customers in Spain, our company is firmly committed to promoting the development of renewable energy in the country. Obtaining this favourable environmental impact assessment is therefore a great step forward for us”.

Pouyanné also believes that the development of these solar farms “will make a massive contribution to the country’s energy transition, as they will be able to power the equivalent of the population of the entire community of Madrid”. In terms of his own plans, he concluded that these projects “will bring us closer to our goal of 100 GW of gross renewable installed capacity by 2030 worldwide”.

^{Photo: TotalEnergies}