While prompting 66,000 likes and 10,000 retweets, Musk’s tweet also elicited its fair share of eye-rolling from those who wondered when the Tesla CEO (and Twitter’s likely new owner) had also become a European energy expert.
BARCELONA, Spain — While visiting Germany last month, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, proffered unsolicited advice to European leaders.Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez promptly responded. “We’re already implementing most ambitious plan towards efficient & sustainable energy system,”While prompting 66,000 likes and 10,000 retweets, Musk’s tweet also elicited its fair share of eye-rolling from those who wondered when the Tesla CEO had also become a European energy expert.
“His idea is provocative,” Mario Sánchez-Herrero, founder of the nonprofit cooperative Ecooo Energía Ciudadana, told Yahoo News, noting that Spain has vast solar and wind energy potential. Nearly 47% of electricity generated in Spain last year, with solar making up almost 14% of that, thanks to huge solar fields and wind farms already in operation.
“The beauty of solar is its flexibility and versatility,” she said. “We don’t need to concentrate solar installations in just one country but can enhance rooftops, support farming, and protect reservoirs across Europe.” "It was mostly the French government that did not want cheap Spanish electricity to come to France because it would have been bad for the profits of EDF, which sometimes overinfluences French decision making,” Pellerin-Carlin told Yahoo News. A view of part of the array at the Solucar solar park in Spain.
Over the past few years, Spain has been galloping ahead in developing solar capacity, thanks in large part to the country’s second-largest utility, Iberdrola, which has been advancing large-scale renewable projects. In 2020, Iberdrola opened the massivein northern Spain, with 1.43 million solar panels spread across 2,470 acres — approximately one-fifth the size of Manhattan.