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As of April 26, 2026, Ibiza's electricity system is under mounting strain. Environmental group Amics de la Terra, the Balearic arm of Friends of the Earth International, says the island's power demand hit an all-time high in 2025 — and that rooftop solar met only 1% of it. The group calls the situation a clear sign that the island's growth-based energy model is broken, and that any credible transition must start with less demand, not just greener supply.
The figures were published to coincide with World Energy Saving Day, marked each year on 21 October. Amics de la Terra cited its own monitoring and system data to describe an energy mix dominated by imports: 61% of electricity came through the Mallorca-Ibiza interconnector and 38% from the island's thermal power station. Solar self-generation contributed just 1%, and even that number does not include many off-grid installations.
The 1% solar share is striking for an island with long sunshine hours. But Amics de la Terra says the island's building stock, grid limits and a holiday-driven demand curve have kept rooftop deployment low. The group argues that solar has huge room to grow, but disputes the idea that it could ever satisfy the island's full appetite for energy.
At the heart of its warning is arithmetic. Electricity represents only about one-fifth of Ibiza's final energy consumption. The rest comes from liquid fuels used in aviation, shipping and road transport. Meeting even the electricity slice with local solar would require very large areas of land — space that the island, with its dense tourism and protected landscapes, does not easily have.
For Amics de la Terra, those limits point to one conclusion: the transition cannot be an exercise in swapping fuel sources while overall demand keeps rising. “There is no green magic wand,” it says. The word it prefers is “degrowth” — not as a slogan, but as a planned contraction in energy and material use.
The group was careful to say its criticism does not target the classic environmentalist vision of renewables, but rather what it calls “green capitalism”. In that model, multinational firms have repackaged themselves as climate leaders while preserving the growth logic behind rising emissions. Local councils and the European Union, it argues, have accepted that model as the only option.
The grid, it adds, is also part of the problem. Ibiza has suffered repeated storm-related power cuts, and the current network is not ready for full electrification of heating and transport. Amics de la Terra repeats its opposition to new oil exploration in the Mediterranean and calls for the phase-out of nuclear power, describing it as dangerous.
What keeps pushing demand upward? The group points to a combined drive from tourism, residential construction, a growing seasonal population and hotter summers that make air conditioning almost unavoidable. Water desalination, mostly invisible to residents, is another major consumer of electricity. The group says the energy impact of desalination is often ignored and contests plans for yet another desalination plant on the island.
Law 10/2019 of the Balearic Islands requires every municipality to adopt a Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan, known by the Spanish acronym PACES, with emission reduction targets. Amics de la Terra warns that these plans must not serve as cover for further growth. It specifically rejects new desalination plants, the promotion of private electric cars, and solar installations attached to new building developments as substitutes for a broader rethink.
The group also stresses that energy planning cannot ignore non-electric fuels. Aviation still runs on kerosene, maritime transport on fuel oil, and diesel trucks move most goods. Ibiza's tourism business, its shops and its food supply all depend on these transport chains, and electrifying them will not happen quickly, regardless of how many solar panels are installed.
On the solution side, Amics de la Terra gives practical priority to retrofitting existing buildings before building new ones. It also advocates more community-owned solar and shared self-consumption schemes, a field in which the Balearic Energy Institute has already launched support programmes. In addition, it wants public cooling refuges to be opened during heatwaves, so that summer energy poverty is addressed without forcing every household to rely solely on air conditioning.
In recent months, Spain has simplified paperwork for rooftop solar and pushed regional support for energy communities. Those are useful first steps, the group says, but they will be ineffective if the island's underlying development model continues to multiply concrete, roads and seasonal jobs.
Not everyone agrees that degrowth is a workable policy frame. Energy economists familiar with Spanish islands note that demand-side efficiency, storage and shared mobility could reduce the amount of squeezed consumption. But there is rare convergence on the core factual point: without a serious effort to moderate demand, Ibiza will struggle to make its power system either renewable or resilient.
What happens next is not only an energy question. Amics de la Terra says Ibiza could become a Mediterranean-scale laboratory for a genuinely post-fossil society. It has developed a vision in which tourism and construction are planned around carrying capacity, not the other way around. The group's final remark is simple: all that is missing is political will and courage.
