In the hot heart of Castile-La Mancha, the sun is harvested.

The solar fields continue to grow on the slope along the road to Puertollano.

The small town used to live from coal mining.

An old winding tower in the center is still a reminder of this.

After the mines closed, many of the miners went to work in the huge refinery with its countless chimneys.

Today, her sons are driving the energy transition: Spain wants to become a major European power for green hydrogen and the former mining town with a good 40,000 inhabitants the capital.

Hans Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.

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The photovoltaic systems on the outskirts of the city supply the electricity to make Spain the “hub of the green hydrogen industry in Europe”, as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez put it.

Puertollano is furthest along this path.

Europe's largest factory for green hydrogen is located in the industrial area on the outskirts of the city.

In May, King Felipe attended the opening ceremony of the plant built by the energy company Iberdrola.

New projects are being presented all over the world these days, and industrial production will soon begin in southern Castile after trial operation.

By the end of 2030, Spain wants to create the conditions for producing four gigawatts of green hydrogen.

This is the national strategy.

"HyDeal", a consortium of around 30 Spanish and international companies, is planning systems with a capacity of up to 67 gigawatts.

Much of this is earmarked for export to France and Germany to help replace the last of Russia's natural gas with hydrogen.

3000 tons of green hydrogen in the first year

However, a lot of electricity is required to produce the climate-neutral energy source.

Up to now, around 70 percent of the costs have been attributable to electricity.

Southern countries like Spain have a great locational advantage here: there is plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind.

Around 48 percent of Spanish electricity already comes from renewable sources, and by 2030 it is expected to be 74 percent.

At the same time, solar and photovoltaic systems are becoming cheaper and more efficient.

The Spanish approval authorities can hardly cope with the flood of applications.

Deer and wild boar can be observed at the edge of the new photovoltaic system near Puertollano, especially in the morning when it is cooler and the sun has not yet come over the mountain.

For the photovoltaic panels, however, the daylight is already sufficient for the first megawatt of electricity.

One hundred megawatts is the capacity that Iberdrola has installed on more than 200 hectares.

In front of Puertollano, the industrial area can be seen in the distance, into which the green electricity flows via an underground cable that is almost ten kilometers long.

The halls and tanks of the new hydrogen factory have been painted fresh green and white.

She doesn't need chimneys from which brown smoke rises, like from the fertilizer plant next door.

Iberdrola has settled right next to "Fertiberia".

The largest manufacturer of artificial fertilizers in Spain will be the most important customer.

Fertiberia would like to replace expensive natural gas with green hydrogen and work CO2-free as quickly as possible.

But that will take a while.

Production in the new 20-megawatt plant will start in stages.

3000 tons of green hydrogen are planned for the first year.

That is just a tenth of the fertilizer factory's energy requirements.

But this alone will save 48,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

By 2027 it should be 40,000 tons of green hydrogen every year.

The energy company has spent 150 million euros on the project, a total of 1.8 billion euros.