How Spain Is Building a Fairer Model for Renewable Energy Deployment

Spain needs to rapidly expand renewable energy to meet its climate goals. But scaling up wind and solar power is not just a technical challenge; it is also a social and territorial one. When large energy projects arrive in rural communities, the benefits often flow elsewhere while the local impacts remain. Addressing that imbalance is at the heart of Renovables con el Territorio (Renewables with the Territory), a multi-year initiative led by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s Spanish Network (REDS-SDSN Spain).

On April 14, 2026, REDS-SDSN Spain brought together policymakers, civil society organizations, businesses, and researchers in Madrid to present the results of the initiative's third phase and to open a high-level dialogue on what a just energy transition really requires.

Three Years of Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue

Launched in 2023, Renovables con el Territorio set out to co-create a shared vision for how renewable energy should be deployed in Spain through 2030 and 2050. In 2024, the initiative delivered a Road Map with 50 proposals for public administrations, companies, and civil society organizations to improve social acceptance, biodiversity compatibility, and local economic development linked to renewable projects.

The third phase took that work further by bringing the national conversation down to two specific territories: Catalonia and Galicia.

Two Territories, Two Tools, One Shared Principle

In Catalonia, a series of dialogue sessions called Diàlegs per una Catalunya Renovable (Dialogues for a Renewable Catalonia) focused on designing a territorial return mechanism. The core idea: part of the economic value generated by large renewable projects should be reinvested directly in the municipalities and regions that host them, with clear criteria for local development, social cohesion, and demographic sustainability. Participants agreed that this instrument should not function as a one-time compensation payment, but as a structural tool for territorial justice, one governed transparently by public bodies, with real participation from affected communities.

In Galicia, the Diálogos para unha Galicia Renovable (Dialogues for a Renewable Galicia) focused on a different but complementary challenge: how to make public participation in renewable energy projects genuinely meaningful. The process produced a draft Manual of Good Practices for Social Participation in Renewable Energy Projects, a practical guide for developers, regulators, and public administrations. The manual argues that informing communities about a project is not the same as involving them in it and sets minimum quality standards for participatory processes, from early-stage design through to monitoring and accountability.

Both outputs reflect the same underlying principle that a renewable energy transition only generates lasting social legitimacy when it is built with territories, not on top of them.

What the High-Level Dialogue Revealed

The Madrid event included a roundtable discussion that brought together senior representatives from Spain's Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, the Spanish Climate Change Office, the Institute for Just Transition, and the Renewables Foundation.

Several key themes emerged:

• Biodiversity and renewables must go together. Spain protects over 36% of its territory under natural protection frameworks and is the largest contributor to the EU's Natura 2000 network. Participants stressed that renewable deployment must actively complement nature restoration efforts.
• Rural areas need targeted support. Decarbonizing rural Spain requires specific measures that recognize both the concentration of renewable infrastructure and the economic and demographic vulnerabilities of rural communities.
• Just transition cannot be separated from climate ambition. The implications of the energy transition for agriculture and industry demand deeper political attention than they have received so far.
• Social license cannot be bought; it must be built. Every new energy infrastructure project requires genuine social legitimacy. That means moving toward a more distributed energy model, closing the gap between production and consumption, and reforming a regulatory framework that was not designed for strong public participation or meaningful local return.
• Closing the gap between citizens and the energy system. Most people do not understand how the electricity system works or what benefits could flow to their communities. Building that understanding is a precondition for any real advance in territorial governance of renewables.

Renovables con el Territorio demonstrates that sustained multi-stakeholder dialogue, when designed with rigour and a genuine commitment to local voices, can produce concrete tools with real policy impact. That model is replicable. And as renewable energy deployment accelerates across Europe, the question of how to make it territorially just is one that every country will need to answer.