Spain's Energy Comeback: What the Strait of Hormuz Crisis Is Revealing About Europe's Future Energy System

Spain's expanding domestic renewable base is making its energy system more resilient to geopolitical fuel shocks, but storage, grid investment and flexibility must catch up.

• The Strait of Hormuz normally carries around one-fifth of globally traded oil and LNG, leaving European countries dependent on imported hydrocarbons vulnerable when supplies are threatened.
• Gas influenced Spanish wholesale power prices in an estimated 52% of hours in 2021, but only 9% during the first five months of 2026, while wind and solar generation rose 37% between 2021 and 2025.
• Renewables now provide about 60% of Spain's electricity, versus roughly 50% across the European Union and one-third globally; the article links this position to power bills that are below their levels before the latest Middle East conflict and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
• Spain still faces reliability issues exposed by the 2025 blackout, including insufficient grid strengthening, flexibility and interconnection, and it had only 193 MW of installed battery capacity in April 2026.
• Spain's updated National Energy and Climate Plan targets 22.5 GW of storage by 2030, comprising 12.5 GW of daily and weekly storage plus 10 GW of seasonal storage; storage should also reduce renewable curtailment and gas demand.

Takeaway: Investors should view renewable generation, storage, grids and flexibility as an integrated resilience opportunity rather than treating decarbonisation as the sole investment rationale, while recognising that Spain's storage and infrastructure gaps remain material constraints.