Akerton Partners has advised the company Nemesis on the sale of its 3MW photovoltaic plant located in Murcia to a fund specialized in renewable energies
Akerton is a financial advisory firm with expertise in renewable energy.
The Spanish Photovoltaic solar energy sector.
Spain has historically been dependent on fossil fuels (according to the Energy Supply Security in Southern Europe and Ireland 74% of the energy generated in Spain came from fossil fuels). The Government implemented subsidies to encourage renewable energy and, specifically, photovoltaic solar energy. These grants were guaranteed by the Spanish government and they led to a high increase in solar MWh produced. By 2007 Spain, because of its favorable climate conditions, was one of the European countries with the highest number of hours of solar radiation but also was one of the European countries with the lowest solar energy production¹. Because of this, the Government focused on this type of energy mainly. In addition, the decrease in the cost of solar panels made this technology very attractive.
Map of climatic zones in Spain
The EU supports the potential change to lower carbon emissions through ruling in favor of renewable energies. In particular, in 2009, the European Union Directive 2009/28/EC was approved. This Directive set the goal that 20% of the EU’s energy consumption should be generated by renewable energies in order to produce less polluting energy.
The Spanish solar energy sector experienced large growth in the following years. In 2007 photovoltaic production was assumed to be 152MWh, while in 2010 it reached 3.842MWh and in 2018 4.744MWh2.
In 2011 Spain reached third place among the countries with the highest solar energy production in Europe, but, despite these results, the Spanish executive decided to make a change in policy which weakened support for solar energy³. This resulted in the widening of the gap between generation costs and revenues collected through tariffs, increasing the tariff deficit. In 2012, given the excessive government debt, this grant system for solar energy was eliminated. And, by that time, the share of fossil fuels had fallen, considerably, to 52%.
Photovoltaic solar power generated in Spain
The effects of the cancellation of the grant system were significant. Although installed capacity continued to grow, it slowed down (from 2014 onwards the annual growth rate was between 0.15% and 0.40%). As a result , investors neither received a return on capital invested nor were they able to amortize debt. Many of these investments were made on a project finance bases.
When analyzing the evolution of installed capacity per Autonomous Community, Castilla-La Mancha is the region with the most solar power installed capacity (20%) followed by Andalucía, Extremadura and Castilla y León. These four communities represent c. 60% of total installed capacity. On the other hand, the Autonomous Communities with the least installed capacity are those with less hours of sun such as Asturias, Cantabria, Ceuta and Melilla, Galicia and País Vasco.
In 2019 the self-consumption decree was implemented (RD244/2019) and the number of installations grew by 80% from 2017 but the increase in installed capacity was only 40%, which indicates that most of the installations in 2018 were small. The autonomous communities with the largest number of self-consumption installations are Catalonia, Andalucía and Galicia (in that order).
In 2020, the Unión Española Fotovoltaica (UNEF)4 supported the approbation of the Royal Decree to encourage photovoltaic sector in order to attract 20M€ of private capital necessary to meet The Energy National and Climate Plan (PNIEC by its Spanish initials).
Lali de Juan, Head of M&A
