The solar energy has become one of the central pieces of the energy transition. Its progress not only responds to the climate urgency, but also to an increasingly real economic logic: producing clean electricity is today cheaper, more decentralized and, in many cases, more strategic than continuing to depend on fossil fuels.
In this transformation, solar energy fulfills several functions at the same time, it accelerates decarbonization, promotes self-consumption in homes and companies, reduces vulnerability to international markets and lowers generation costs. In countries like Spain, this combination has made it a fundamental technology to redefine the energy map.
Solar, the one that contributes the most
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)for the first time in 2025 a renewable technology, solar photovoltaics, was the one that contributed the most to cover the 1.3% increase in energy demand in the world.
Global leadership in solar energy is unevenly distributed. China dominates by industrial scale and installed capacity; United States, due to investment and regulatory impulse; and Spain, by solar resource, speed of development and attractiveness for new projects.
The high rate of annual sunshine hours provides the Iberian Peninsula with one of the best resources in Europe, making projects reach high levels of efficiency. In Spain, photovoltaics is already the technology with the greatest installed power and its growth is concentrated in communities such as Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura, thanks to its irradiation, land availability and associated industrial ecosystem.
Naturgy, a success story
The growth of solar energy in Spain is also explained through companies that have made the energy transition a central element of their strategic plans. Naturgy is one of those examplesits renewable deployment shows to what extent photovoltaics has ceased to be a marginal bet and has become a central infrastructure of the new electrical system.
Its photovoltaic map is concentrated above all in the interior and south of the peninsula, where the solar resource and the availability of land allow the development of large projects. Castilla-La Mancha has established itself as one of its main enclaves, while Extremadura and Andalusia are gaining weight as strategic territories within its portfolio.
Among its most representative projects stands out Campo de Arañuelo, in Cáceres, called to be Naturgy’s largest photovoltaic plant in Spain. The company plans an investment of more than 150 million euros and a annual production close to 515 GWhequivalent to the consumption of more than 157,000 homes. In Castilla-La Mancha, the Picón I, II and III complex has established itself as one of the great regional references, while Zorita I, Zorita II and Ocaña are part of the company’s next wave of photovoltaic expansion.
Beyond the figures, the Naturgy case illustrates how solar energy is no longer presented only as a green technology, but as an infrastructure with territorial impact, associated employment and the ability to reorganize the electrical system. Its photovoltaic expansion in regions of the interior and southern peninsula confirms that solar energy has ceased to be an emerging technology and has become a central infrastructure of the new electrical system.