“Entire boatloads of panels from China were being auctioned before they even got to port,” one dealer said.
Banks eagerly handed out loans.
“It became an instrument for speculators,” explained environmental expert Juanma Redondo. “Solar gardens were being sold like pension funds. It was a risk-free investment.”
Licenses to build solar gardens or connect up to the grid became Spain’s most sought-after pieces of paper, and backhanders and trafficking in licenses soon started.
Clean energy is believed to have attracted dirty money, as the notoriously corrupt construction business sought ways to launder illegal earnings. Information about plans to build connection points to dump solar power into the grid also became hugely valuable: Land prices around these points multiplied up to 10 times overnight.
“Who got the licenses? That is where the shadow of doubt appears. There have been no public tenders and no transparent decision-making,” commented Luis Gomez, a journalist at El Pais.
A dozen officials at the regional government of Castilla y Leon in northwest Spain were sacked last year after giving licences to relatives. Then Jose Joaquin Moya, the socialist mayor of Bigastro, eastern Spain, was arrested for allegedly selling licenses.
When Spain’s National Commission for Energy decided to inspect 30 solar gardens, it found only 13 of them had been built properly and were actually dumping electricity into the network. After exceeding its solar energy target 10 times over, Spain has slashed subsidies for future projects.
Despite the corruption brought by the boom, Spain is also reaping benefits. On sunny days solar panels provide up to 5 percent of the country’s energy needs. Wind turbines like those at La Muela provide even more clean energy, allowing Spain to cover almost a third of electricity needs from renewable sources last month.
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