Spanish airport operator Aena inaugurated a 120 MW photovoltaic plant at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport on 2 September 2026, which the company describes as the largest solar park at any airport in Europe. The plant comprises roughly 215,000 solar panels across an area equivalent to about 200 football fields, and is expected to generate around 243 GWh a year — enough, according to Aena, to cover the electricity needs of roughly 100,000 households. Aena president Maurici Lucena, Transport Minister Óscar Puente, and Ecological Transition Vice President Sara Aagesen attended the opening.
The 120 MW now in operation is not the end state of the project. Two further phases are underway: a 45 MW plant and a separate 7.5 MW self-consumption installation, which would bring Barajas’s total solar capacity to 172.5 MW once complete — a figure Aena says is sized to eventually cover 100% of the airport’s own electricity consumption. Reports on the exact construction status of these two remaining phases vary somewhat, with some describing the 45 MW plant as still in design and the 7.5 MW plant as more advanced, and others describing both as under construction; either way, neither is yet generating power.
The main plant was awarded to contractor Construcciones San José under a €99.1 million contract covering both construction and ongoing maintenance over a project period of roughly four years, with the facility rated at 142.4 MWp of peak panel capacity against its 120 MW nominal grid output — a standard gap between a solar plant’s panel rating and its actual export capacity.
Barajas’s new capacity represents close to a quarter of all photovoltaic capacity across Aena’s airport network, according to the company, and is the largest single component of a Photovoltaic Plan the company launched in 2020. That plan has grown in scope over time: Aena now says the program represents more than €750 million in investment across its network (up from an original estimate of over €350 million when first announced), targeting roughly 950 GWh of annual solar generation across its airports. Aena, which operates 46 airports in Spain, has said it aims for 100% renewable electricity supply and carbon neutrality across its network by 2026, with a further target of net-zero emissions by 2030 — about two decades ahead of the aviation sector’s broader net-zero commitments under bodies like ACI Europe.
Other Spanish airports in Aena’s solar buildout include a 5 MW plant tendered at Seville airport for €5.2 million, and a combined roughly €33 million investment in photovoltaic plants at Barcelona–El Prat and Reus airports — smaller installations that illustrate Barajas’s project is an outsized flagship within a much broader, airport-by-airport rollout rather than a one-off.
At the inauguration, Aagesen also placed the project in a national context, noting that Spain’s total installed photovoltaic capacity has grown more than 1,000% since 2018, a expansion she tied to the country’s push for greater energy autonomy.
