Brussels, July 30, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal and Spain have abundant renewable energy, technical expertise and institutions that could position them as leading figures in the European energy transition, but the Iberian energy market must be interconnected with the rest of Europe, according to a report released on Wednesday.
Entitled ‘After the energy crisis: Policy responses in the Iberian Peninsula’, the document - prepared by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation (FFMS) and the Brookings Institution - warns that Iberia's limited energy interconnection with France and other neighbouring countries represents a growing strategic vulnerability, urging European Union (EU) policy makers to treat it as an urgent priority.
The report examines the ‘rapid and effective response’ of the Iberian Peninsula to the 2022 energy crisis, triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, concluding that, due to abundant renewable energy, robust liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure and innovative tools such as the “Iberian exception” the region helped stabilise markets, protecting households from the worst impacts of the crisis.
Despite this strong performance and broad public support for the energy transition, the authors of the document argue that weak network connectivity continues to hamper the Iberian Peninsula's contribution to Europe's energy resilience.
“The Iberian Peninsula has everything it needs to be a leader in clean energy in Europe. But the blackout in April 2025 exposed how vulnerable it is without stronger interconnections,” said study co-author Gonzalo Escribano, head of the Energy and Climate Programme at the Real Elcano Institute.
Quoted in a statement, Elcano argues that “improving connectivity is essential to fully unlock the potential of the Iberian Peninsula and secure Europe’s energy future”.
Currently, only 3% of the Iberian Peninsula’s electricity capacity is connected to the wider EU grid, well below the 15% target for 2030.
The authors of the study warn that this bottleneck limits the Peninsula's ability to contribute fully to European energy security, decarbonisation targets and green industrial growth.
And although interconnection projects with France are underway, they stress that Europe must go “further and faster”
The authors also frame the issue as a geopolitical imperative, arguing that at a time of intensifying global competition and growing transatlantic trade relations, "it has never been more urgent to strengthen internal energy infrastructure to reduce external dependencies and strengthen strategic autonomy".
Currently, US LNG is key to decoupling Europe from Russian supplies, but long-term transatlantic cooperation on energy and infrastructure could be undermined by trade tensions.
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