The first half of 2021 is positive proof that the efforts being made to make the ecological transition possible are bearing fruit: more than half of the electricity in Spain in this 6-month period has been generated using renewable sources.
And what is more, if 2020 was a very green year, 2021 promises to be even better: in just six months, green energy technologies in Spain has already produced more than in the whole of 2008. Production in the first half of the year grew by 19.5% compared to the same period last year, reaching 65,563 GWh, which represents more than half (51.3%) of the electricity produced nationwide so far in 2021.
Spearheading this renewable drive is wind power, responsible for almost a quarter of all production in Spain (24.7%) during the first six months of 2021. Wind power generated 23.7% more GWh in the national electricity system than in the same period in 2020, with February being the month in which its share reached its peak: 29.8% of the total generation mix.
Meanwhile, hydro, which generated 15.1% of the total, experienced an increase of 9.3% compared to the same period last year, and closed this first half of the year with contributing a total of 19,314 GWh to the electricity generation mix.
Solar photovoltaic, as valuable as it is variable
Another technology which played a key role in the first half of 2021 was solar photovoltaic, which, as the days go by and the number of hours of sunlight grows, is increasing its contribution to the electricity generation mix, provided, of course, that bad weather does not get in the way. Thus, generation with this technology increased by 35.6% from January to June compared to the same period in 2020.
This technology has not stopped breaking its own records thanks to the increase in its installed power capacity nationwide. So much so that in May this year, solar photovoltaic had its most productive month by breaking through the 2,000 GWh barrier and achieving a share of more than 11% in the monthly generation mix. And once again in June, solar photovoltaic set new all-time highs: 6 June was the day with the highest daily share (14.5%), while on 24 June the sun enabled 92 GWh to be generated with solar photovoltaic panels, representing a new record of daily generation using this technology since national records began (2007).
30 January could have been just any other ordinary Saturday, were it not for the fact that wind power production pushed renewable energy to its maximum share in the total generation mix: on that day, 69.2% of electricity came from renewable/inexhaustible energy sources such as wind, which, with an output of 383 GWh in a single day, accounted for 48.1% of Spain's total electricity generation.
