Debate Over Solar Plant Construction in Andalusian Olive Groves Intensifies

Summary

In Spain’s olive-grow­ing region of Andalusia, plans to install solar pan­els on arable land have sparked protests from local farm­ers and civil soci­ety groups, with poten­tial impli­ca­tions for the region’s olive oil pro­duc­tion and econ­omy. While the regional gov­ern­ment argues that the renew­able energy projects are in the pub­lic inter­est, cam­paign­ers are call­ing for a mora­to­rium on the removal of olive trees and solar instal­la­tions, high­light­ing the impor­tance of tra­di­tional olive groves in reduc­ing car­bon diox­ide emis­sions and food secu­rity.

In Spain’s olive-grow­ing heart­land, a clash between renew­able energy ambi­tions and cen­turies-old agri­cul­tural tra­di­tion is esca­lat­ing. 

The country’s National Energy and Climate Plan sets a tar­get of installing 76 gigawatts of pho­to­voltaic capac­ity by 2030, of which 57 gigawatts is expected to be met with ground-mounted solar pho­to­voltaic pan­els.

These pan­els are often installed as part of util­ity-scale devel­op­ments, which usu­ally require hun­dreds of hectares.

In Andalusia, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, which boasts nearly 3,000 hours of sun­shine annu­ally, the regional gov­ern­ment has approved the instal­la­tion of 25 mega-solar plants on 5,500 hectares of olive groves.

The announce­ment resulted in protests by local farm­ers across the Andalusian provinces of Jaén and Córdoba, with Lopera, Jaén, becom­ing a flash­point.

Two solar devel­op­ers have pro­posed mul­ti­ple solar projects near Lopera, a small town dom­i­nated by olive farm­ing, which cam­paign­ers esti­mate would cover 1,000 hectares of arable land.

Despite col­lect­ing more than 128,000 sig­na­tures call­ing for a mora­to­rium on olive tree removal and solar instal­la­tion in the region, the civil soci­ety group SOS Rural said the gov­ern­ment plans to move for­ward with the plan.

“The regional gov­ern­ment argues that the felling of olive trees has the sup­port of soci­ety and com­plies with the law, but SOS Rural reminds them that we have col­lected more than 122,000 sig­na­tures in our cam­paign against the felling, that many own­ers have had their olive trees forcibly expro­pri­ated, and that the law used by [Andalusian pres­i­dent Juan Manuel Moreno’s] gov­ern­ment as a shield is pro­foundly immoral,” said Natalia Corbalán, national spokesper­son for SOS Rural.

Indeed, the regional gov­ern­ment has declared the renew­able energy projects to be in the ​“pub­lic inter­est,” allow­ing Andalusian author­i­ties to pur­sue expro­pri­a­tion pro­ceed­ings against hold­outs. 

Campaigners pre­dict that the planned solar plants could result in the removal of about 42,000 olive trees, though offi­cials esti­mate the num­ber to be closer to 13,000.

The poten­tial loss of olive groves has far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions. According to the local olive oil coop­er­a­tive La Loperana, los­ing 500 hectares of olive trees would wipe out more than €3 mil­lion in wages and olive oil sales. 

The issue of expro­pri­a­tion has ignited a polit­i­cal firestorm, with 50 affected farm­ers from Jaén meet­ing with a group of far-right regional law­mak­ers from the Vox party. 

The con­tro­versy has also seen the left-wing Podemos party rally to the defence of the farm­ers, unit­ing both ends of the polit­i­cal spec­trum against the con­ser­v­a­tive Andalusian People’s Party, with elec­tions sched­uled in less than one year.

In response to the grow­ing back­lash, Andalusian offi­cials defended the process, insist­ing that locat­ing the solar plants is the respon­si­bil­ity of the pri­vate com­pa­nies involved in the process, with a vari­ety of fac­tors, includ­ing avail­abil­ity of grid con­nec­tion and solar resources, play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in the deci­sion of where they are located. 

Despite the loud pub­lic spat, Juan Vilar, the chief exec­u­tive of Vilcon, a Jaén-based con­sul­tancy to the olive oil sec­tor, said solar plants cur­rently take up a small per­cent­age of the country’s fer­tile agri­cul­tural land, but this is already too much. 

“Spain ranks sev­enth world­wide in installed pho­to­voltaic park sur­face area on fer­tile land. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, these parks occupy 0.2 per­cent of usable agri­cul­tural land, about 50,000 hectares,” he told Olive Oil Times.

“To put that in per­spec­tive: Spain is the fourth largest pro­ducer of pis­ta­chios glob­ally, and pho­to­voltaic parks cover almost 60 per­cent of the sur­face area that pis­ta­chio trees occupy in the coun­try’s agri­cul­tural foot­print,” Vilar added.

Campaigners have also high­lighted that tra­di­tional and cen­tury-old olive groves play a sig­nif­i­cant role in global efforts to reduce car­bon diox­ide emis­sions asso­ci­ated with cli­mate change. 

“[Traditional olive groves] allow 5.5 kilo­grams of car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent to be removed from the atmos­phere for each kilo­gram of [unpack­aged] oil pro­duced,” said Lázuli Fernández from the University of Jaén, which is research­ing the car­bon-cap­tur­ing power of olive groves.

Meanwhile, Vilar fur­ther high­lighted the poten­tial dam­age that replac­ing pro­duc­tive crops and crop­land with util­ity-scale solar could do to food secu­rity. 

“According to a Snapshot Report, pho­to­voltaic parks now cover 1.3 mil­lion hectares of arable land glob­ally,” Vilar said. ​“That’s equiv­a­lent to the area planted with peach trees — the tenth most impor­tant per­ma­nent crop world­wide.” 

“In other words, using this fer­tile land for solar parks rather than plant­ing peach trees pre­vents the pro­duc­tion of more than 22 mil­lion met­ric tons of this fruit,” he added. ​“Using peaches as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive crop, the land cov­ered by solar parks could oth­er­wise yield 3.5 bil­lion kilo­grams of food annu­ally, enough to con­tribute mean­ing­fully to feed­ing the more than 900 mil­lion peo­ple who suf­fer from hunger every day.” 

Instead, Vilar believes there should be more focus on installing solar on rooftops and in mar­ginal lands that are not well suited to agri­cul­ture. 

“Wouldn’t it be more appro­pri­ate to pri­or­i­tize locat­ing these solar parks in deserts, rooftops, reser­voirs, lakes, ponds, and other non-arable spaces, given how scarce and finite fer­tile land truly is?” he ques­tioned.

• SOS Rural
• The Objective