At FES Iberia 2025, Grupo Fe Energy led the debate on the future of energy demand in Spain. Moderating the panel “Boosting demand and new opportunities”, CEO Alberto García Feijoo opened with a key insight:
“One of the problems we’re facing is that such effervescent development, without associated demand, ends up with serious problems.”
According to García Feijoo, Spain’s power sector is now dealing with the side effects of unbalanced growth. There is an abundance of renewable generation, but demand has not grown accordingly, creating structural tensions in the system and exposing weaknesses in planning and regulation.
Grid access and project bottlenecks
García Feijoo pointed to the surge in new requests for access to the grid as a sign of untapped potential:
“We’re seeing close to 60 GW of requests already, but there are serious problems with access.”
Despite that scale, delays persist due to speculative project saturation and a system that does not differentiate between real and opportunistic demand. For Grupo Fe Energy, the core of the issue lies in a lack of coordination between the development of renewable supply and demand-driving sectors such as data centres.
Data centres as strategic demand anchors
Throughout the session, García Feijoo emphasised that Spain needs to incorporate data centres into its demand strategy as a way to stabilise and make efficient use of its renewable generation.
“We’ve taken 30 years to build 200 MW of data centres, and now in two years we’re going to build 400,” he noted.
This sharp growth signals a market that is ready to invest — if the system allows it. However, García Feijoo warned that many of these projects may not move forward if network access and permitting delays continue:
“Some nodes are already saturated, and even though there’s capacity, we can’t connect.”
A system without alignment
One of the central points raised by Grupo Fe Energy was the misalignment between regulation, planning, and technological evolution. García Feijoo stated:
“Regulation is currently designed for one cycle, while the technological change that’s taking place belongs to another.”
He stressed the need for planning processes that can incorporate the shifts happening during development phases. “When you request access, and you do all the planning for access, you use a technology that is later no longer the same when you’re ready to execute.”
In his view, Spain must modernise its regulatory logic to anticipate and enable energy-intensive sectors that support digitalisation, such as data centres, not slow them down.
Bringing demand and generation together
To close the loop between generation and demand, García Feijoo proposed a more strategic approach to system planning. He posed a direct challenge:
“We’ve always talked about how demand is an enabler for generation. We need to start talking about how generation enables demand.”
This reversal in logic, he suggested, is key for unlocking sectors that are ready to consume large volumes of renewable power. In this context, data centres represent not just economic opportunity but a structural solution to current grid imbalances.
A final message: closing the opportunity gap
García Feijoo concluded the session with a message that summarises Grupo Fe Energy’s position at FES Iberia 2025:
“We have a generation. We have demand. What we’re missing is closing that opportunity.”
With this, Grupo Fe Energy reaffirmed its role as a proactive voice in Spain’s energy transformation, calling for modern regulation, integrated planning, and a clear institutional commitment to enable next-generation demand.
