Spain’s Iberdrola will build 100 MW captive solar plant for KSA’s SABIC in Spain

Spain is getting a Saudi solar PV plant: Spain’s Iberdrola has secured the planning permissions to kickstart the construction of a 100 MW captive solar photovoltaic plant in the Spanish port city of Cartagena on behalf of Saudi chemicals giant SABIC, a statement by the utility provider read on Thursday.

The details: Under a power purchase agreement (PPA), Iberdrola will commit to supplying electricity from the solar farm to SABIC’s industrial facility La Aljorra for 25 years, the statement says. The solar plant — which would require c.EUR 70 mn in investment — would see Iberdrola install 263k solar panels and is expected to come online in 2024.

We’d already known about this: SABIC and Iberdrola signed in 2020 an agreement on the 100 MW solar PV facility as part of a plan to make the Saudi company’s polycarbonate facility in Spain the world’s first large-scale chemical production site to fully operate on renewables. The solar farm will allow SABIC’s customers — including those in the automotive and construction sectors — to access polycarbonate solutions manufactured entirely through renewable energy.

All part of SABIC’s ambitious targets: The solar facility should help the Saudi chemical producer meet its target of having 4 GW of wind or solar energy installed for its sites globally by 2025 and 12 GW by 2030.

More to come? Iberdrola and SABIC plan to fully decarbonize their Cartagena plants by 2028, the statement noted. “We continue to work closely with SABIC to implement additional solutions to achieve full decarbonization at any facility globally,” Iberdrola’s Director of Global Customers and PPAs Raquel Blanco at Iberdrola said.