Iberdrola, one of the largest Spanish companies specialized in producing, distributing, and marketing electricity and natural gas, expects the plant to come on stream in 2025 and meet the energy demand of 430,000 homes.
Relations between the Portuguese government and Iberdrola continue to strengthen. The company has announced that it already has permission from the Portuguese Environment Agency to build a 1,200 megawatt photovoltaic project, which will make it the largest in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. Until now, the European title has been held by another Iberdrola plant, which went into operation in the summer of 2022 in the province of Cáceres with 590 megawatts of installed capacity.
The Portuguese plant, named after the poet Fernando Pessoa, will be built in Santiago de Cacém, a town on the Alentejo coast located about 160 kilometers from Lisbon. Iberdrola estimates that it will be able to cover the energy demand of 430,000 homes and avoid the annual consumption of 370 million cubic meters of gas. The planned investment for the project is around 700 million euros, almost a quarter of the 3 billion euros the company plans to invest in wind and solar installations in Portugal in the coming years.
The project was originally promoted by the Portuguese-Spanish company Prosolia, which retains a stake in the project, according to the weekly Expresso. The area where it will be located is now occupied by eucalyptus trees, which will be replaced by 700,000 photovoltaic modules. The project will employ some 2,500 people during the construction phase, according to the Spanish energy company.
In a statement, the company's chairman, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, stressed that the new facility "combines the ambitions of clean energy with the generation of positive and tangible environmental and social impacts". The company highlighted the complementary measures that will be implemented to mitigate the environmental impact, which include the replacement of eucalyptus trees with native trees, the introduction of beehives and the use of the land for sheep farming, as well as vocational training activities in the field of energy and the tourism sector.
Photovoltaics is gaining more recognition and at GreenView Energy we strongly encourage the development of new solar energy projects worldwide to EMPOWER THE FUTURE.
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