Castilla-La Mancha is consolidating its position as one of the leading regions in renewable energies in Spain. With more than 15 gigawatts of installed capacity and growing investment, the region is on the podium of this strategic sector. Companies in the sector such as Verbund, ID Energy and Eiffage Energía Sistemas and the regional Administration agreed at the forum ‘Renewable energies in the rural environment: challenges and opportunities’, organized by EL ESPAÑOL – EL DIGITAL CLM on the need to improve evacuation infrastructures, reduce bureaucracy and promote dialogue with municipalities to increase the positive impact of the sector.
“Castilla-La Mancha is in the Champions League of renewables and competing for the cup,” said María Llanos Valero, provincial delegate of the Ministry of Sustainable Development in Albacete. In this sense, she recalled that the autonomous community has processed 427 projects in 2024, to which another 109 have been added that, due to their size, have been processed by the Ministry. All of them have generated an investment of 470 million euros and the creation of up to 3,000 jobs.
The development of the renewable energy sector in Castilla-La Mancha is not only due to the fact that it has abundant solar and wind resources and land to establish itself in. “It also has an administration that has been able to understand the importance of the sector, which has developed a stable legal framework and has opened the doors to companies,” said Enrique Barbudo Sepúlveda, general manager of Verbund Green Power Iberia.
“Castilla-La Mancha is the second autonomous community in installed renewable power with more than 13,000 megawatts of solar and wind power. But there has not only been a significant development of renewable generation companies, but also a significant industrial development of other auxiliary sectors: construction companies, maintenance companies or component manufacturing companies,” explained Barbudo.
But this sector also faces problems that condition its growth, such as the inadequacy of energy transport and distribution networks. “It cannot be that one of the regions that produces the most clean energy has difficulties in evacuating it and, in addition, in supplying its own industrial fabric,” said the Provincial Delegate for Sustainable Development in Albacete of the Regional Government.
In this regard, Matías Gotor, Director of Renewable Business Development at Eiffage Energía Sistemas, assured that the lack of evacuation capacity is slowing down investment since “not all the energy that is being generated can be evacuated.” However, Valero explained that the final layout of the trans-Manchegan network is about to be approved,” a highway for transporting energy whose first phase is expected to be operational in 2026.
Other problems faced by the sector is excessive bureaucracy. “There is a very rigid and hard bureaucracy. Furthermore, there is no single legislation, because in addition to the national legislation, each autonomous community has its own,” said Benito Puebla, director of ID Energy.
“We must improve these processes so that there is not so much bureaucratic barrier, because there are projects that take three or four years to come out,” said Puebla. A period that the general director of Verbund Green Power Iberia raised to six years. All those responsible for the sector agreed that there is “capacity for improvement.”
At this point, Valero defended the work of the administration in this regard. “We have multiplied the processing of files by 10 by creating specialized teams in each of the delegations and we have regulations that speed up processes,” responded Valero, although he acknowledged that “it can be improved” and asked for more staff for the provincial delegations.
Social rejection
Another of the challenges that the sector must address is the social rejection of some projects. “It is not sustainable that after five years of investment and procedures, a mayor paralyzes a plant for a “a change of political sign,” lamented Puebla. The solutions involve improving communication with local communities.
