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Today, we explore Spain powering up Europe.
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Coffee at the ready…
The Big Sip
The take: Musk pitched solar Spain at Davos to the guy whose fund already owns the companies that would build it.
What happened: At the World Economic Forum, Elon Musk told BlackRock CEO Larry Fink that Spain's depopulated regions could power all of Europe with solar, just needs political will, apparently.
Why it matters: BlackRock owns 5.4% of Iberdrola plus chunks of Enel, Acciona, Naturgy, and Repsol. These are literally the firms that deploy renewables in Spain.
What to watch: Spain's government already called it "extravagant"—code for "we're not turning into a solar colony for American capital, cheers.”
Musk is building 100 GW/year solar capacity. Fink finances projects. Spain provides land and sunshine. Two of them get paid, one gets panels.
Sponsor Break
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Here’s Your Brew
Spain's depopulated regions—called España Vaciada (Empty Spain)—have lost 28% of their population over the past 50 years.
Over 4,000 municipalities are at risk of just...
Disappearing.
Some provinces like Soria are down to under 9 people per square kilometre, which is the EU's official "this place is demographically doomed" threshold.
Musk says solar panels fix this.
And look, technically, he's not wrong about the sunshine. Spain added 7.9 GW of solar last year. They're already running 53% renewable.
Except that Spain's grid is 83.4% saturated.
New projects literally cannot connect. Developers requested 40 GW of access in 2025. Got approved for 4.5 GW.
Another 25 GW got rejected outright because there's no physical room on the grid.
Rural Spain's already dealing with factory farms, mining operations, and data centres hoovering up land.
The government keeps saying they want a "citizen-centred" energy transition, which sounds nice until you realise what they're rejecting: the model where BlackRock finances mega-projects, Spanish utilities build them, and rural towns get what exactly?
Construction jobs for 18 months?
What Musk's actually proposing—strip away the climate framing—is to turn European rural decline into infrastructure real estate.
He manufactures the panels. BlackRock finances deployment. The utilities BlackRock already owns build the projects.
Rural Spain provides the land and gets...
Well.
We'll see.
Two Sides, One Mug
Pro: Spain's got 50% more solar radiation than Germany, rural regions are desperate for economic activity, and the country's already proved it can deploy at scale—48 GW installed, 7.9 GW added just last year.
Con: The grid rejected 25 GW worth of projects in 2025 because 83.4% of nodes are saturated, and when BlackRock owns the utilities that build the infrastructure while rural towns shoulder the land use, you've just built an extraction model with solar panels instead of coal mines.
Our read: Tech's fine, grid's broken, but the real question is who owns what gets built—and Musk pitching to Fink isn't a coincidence.
Receipt of the Day
Red Eléctrica Capacity Maps, Sept 2025
83.4% of Spain's distribution nodes are saturated. That's not "getting full," that's full. Developers wanted 40 GW of access last year, got 4.5 GW approved, and 25 GW rejected flat-out. Another 8.5 GW is stuck in review. The bottleneck isn't political will or climate denial—it's actual physical grid capacity. You can't plug in Musk's continental power plant when the grid can't even handle projects from 2022.
Spit Take
28% population loss in rural Spain over the past 50 years.
Source: España Vaciada movement
Your Coffee Break Links (and water cooler chatter)
Strategic Energy Europe - Spain added 8.8 GW renewables in 2025, almost all solar—but the grid's so saturated they're turning away new projects regardless of how much capital or climate ambition you've got.
Renovables Verdes - Spain's government response to Musk: "extravagant." Translation: we're not doing the solar colony thing, thanks.
Iberdrola ownership structure - The actual ownership: Qatar 8.8%, BlackRock 5.4%, Norway 3%, plus a mix of European states and private capital. These are the firms that would build what Musk is selling.
Mugshot Poll 📊
If Musk's mega-solar happens, who actually wins?
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Enjoy your Monday, keep it caffeinated.
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