The Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has secured permission from the country’s Council of Ministers to urgently process 2 Royal Decrees in a bid to enable the country install close to 60 GW renewable energy by 2030.

Both these decrees once approved, MITECO stressed, will provide legal certainty and security to the national energy framework, give a fillip to the local industrial value chain and promote orderly deployment of renewables in the country.

One of the decrees relates to the regulation of a new renewables auctions system to ensure security and income stability to investors and pass on the savings to end consumers in terms of affordable power generation through renewables ‘the cheapest source of generation’.

The other decree approved authorizes the urgent processing of grid connection permits and access.

This development comes close on the heels of the national cabinet approving a Royal Decree-Law obliging Spain to aim for 100% renewable energy electricity system by 2050, to enable extensive renewable energy deployment as part of the government’s efforts to steer the nation towards green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once the Royal Decree is approved, the ministry will launch competitive auctions to be judged on the basis of lowest bids received.

Meanwhile, the Spanish PV association UNEF has called for political consensus to quickly approve the draft Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition ‘allow the pending aspects of the European Renewable Energy Directive in the area of ​​legal security and self-consumption to be transposed into the Spanish legal system’.

Europe’s largest PV market in 2019, Spain added 780 MW of new solar PV capacity during the first half of 2020 taking the cumulative installed capacity to 9.69 GW at the end of June 2020, as per REE data.