Spain: created world-leading CSP industry, shattered investor confidence

The document examines how Spain's Feed-in Tariffs and Feed-in Premiums successfully drove the deployment of 2.3 GW of CSP and fostered a world-leading domestic industry, but later shattered investor confidence through retroactive cost-cutting measures. It highlights that the lack of deployment caps and failure to drive cost reductions led to unsustainable public costs, resulting in a market standstill since 2012 and increased financing costs due to heightened risk aversion.

• Spanish financial incentives, specifically the Feed-in Tariff and Feed-in Premium, successfully drove the deployment of 2.3 GW of CSP plants in under five years, with an average of 300MW financed annually between 2006 and 2012.
• The policy framework supported innovation in thermal storage technology, allowing developers to increase revenues by selling electricity during peak price periods and improving plant capacity factors.
• Spain developed a dominant global CSP industry, with Spanish companies accounting for 75% of the domestic market and over 55% of CSP capacity installed outside of Spain over a ten-year period.
• The absence of deployment caps and a failure to foster market competition meant investment costs did not decrease as capacity grew, leaving Spanish installations more expensive than those in Morocco and India, where costs were nearly 30% lower.
• Retroactive policy changes to reduce support costs caused the domestic CSP market to stop completely, with no new investments since 2012 and a significant increase in investor risk aversion.
• Due to current policy uncertainty, any new public support intended to attract CSP investment would need to be nearly 20% higher than previous levels, even if technology costs were reduced by 30%.

APA

Climate Policy Initiative (2014). Spain: created world-leading CSP industry, shattered investor confidence. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/san-giorgio-group-brief-spain-created-world-leading-csp-industry-shattered-investor-confidence/

Chicago

Climate Policy Initiative. Spain: created world-leading CSP industry, shattered investor confidence. 2014. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/san-giorgio-group-brief-spain-created-world-leading-csp-industry-shattered-investor-confidence/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate Policy Initiative |title=Spain: created world-leading CSP industry, shattered investor confidence |date=1 August 2014 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/san-giorgio-group-brief-spain-created-world-leading-csp-industry-shattered-investor-confidence/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climatepolicyinitiative2014spain, author = {{Climate Policy Initiative}}, title = {{Spain: created world-leading CSP industry, shattered investor confidence}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2014}, month = aug, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/san-giorgio-group-brief-spain-created-world-leading-csp-industry-shattered-investor-confidence/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }