Spain is preparing to incorporate a new source of electricity demand. The approval of the Auto+ Plan, the future e-credit market, and the growth in registrations anticipate greater penetration of electric vehicles, but their impact on the energy system will not be limited to simply increasing consumption.
Arturo Pérez de Lucia , general director of the Business Association for the Development and Promotion of Electric Mobility (AEDIVE), estimates that the Spanish vehicle fleet currently consumes about 330 TWh of energy per year .
Its complete conversion to electric technology would reduce that figure to approximately 120 TWh .
The difference represents a saving of 210 TWh, equivalent to 64% , due to the greater efficiency of the electric motor compared to the combustion engine.
The calculation does not imply that Spain must immediately generate an additional 120 TWh of electricity. The replacement of the vehicle fleet will be gradual and will depend on the rate of new vehicle registrations, fleet renewal, and infrastructure deployment.
The Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan aims to reach around 5.5 million electric vehicles by 2030 , a sufficient scale to begin modifying the profile of national demand.
The Auto+ Plan can accelerate the market
The Government has just activated the Auto+ Plan, initially endowed with 400 million euros and with retroactive effects from January 1, 2026.
The new model replaces the regional management of the MOVES III program with a national platform and applies the incentive directly at the dealership. The subsidies reach up to €4,500 for certain fully electric passenger cars and up to €5,000 for light commercial vehicles.
The simplification could accelerate registrations in the coming months, although AEDIVE warns that retroactive measures will absorb a significant portion of the budget.
According to Pérez de Lucia, between 50% and 60% of the funds could correspond to vehicles acquired since the beginning of the year . Therefore, continued growth will depend on sufficient resources and stable market signals.
More electric vehicles will mean a greater demand for electricity, but also an opportunity to take advantage of renewable production that is currently finding it difficult to integrate into the system.
“We continue to generate renewable energy in Spain, but we are dissipating it because we lack demand ,” said the CEO of AEDIVE.
Millions of batteries serving the grid
The next stage will be bidirectional charging. Vehicle-to-grid technologies will allow cars not only to consume electricity, but also to return some of it to the grid when needed.
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The priority will remain ensuring user mobility, so only a fraction of each battery's capacity will be available. However, aggregating millions of vehicles could provide distributed storage, reduce peak loads, and respond to fluctuations in renewable energy generation.
“We are talking about a strategic energy demand axis that, in the future, will not only take energy from the grid, but will be able to deliver it in a distributed manner at other times and locations,” explained Pérez de Lucia.
Electrifying the vehicle fleet will not eliminate the need to reinforce networks, install stationary storage, or expand infrastructure. But it will change the energy balance of transportation: Spain would go from using around 330 TWh of fuel to needing approximately 120 TWh of electricity , with greater capacity to use locally produced renewable resources.
Recharge when there is excess energy
The vehicles remain parked for most of the day. This feature allows sessions to be shifted to times of peak renewable energy generation, provided that time-of-use tariffs, automation, and smart chargers are available.
Home and workplace charging offers a particularly wide margin. Instead of concentrating consumption at the end of the day, systems can be programmed for the early morning or midday hours, when photovoltaic production typically reaches its peak.
Demand doesn't have to be simultaneous either. Chargers can stagger sessions, adjust available power, and prioritize vehicles that need to fully charge their batteries first.
This flexibility would allow the absorption of some of the electricity that currently faces low or negative prices and episodes of curtailment, reducing the gap between peak renewable generation hours and peak consumption hours.
The National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan's goal of reaching approximately 5.5 million electric vehicles by 2030 would scale up that capacity. However, the impact will depend on the development of smart charging and on economic incentives that reward consumption during periods of greatest economic benefit.
E-credits put a price on that new demand
The new Royal Decree on the decarbonization of transport strengthens the link between electric mobility and renewable generation by incorporating the electricity used in recharging into the certificate market.
Charging point operators will be able to act as authorized entities, generate e-credits for the renewable electricity supplied to vehicles and sell them to fuel suppliers obliged to reduce their carbon intensity.
The mechanism will not function as a public subsidy. The value will come from the obligated entities that need to acquire certificates to meet their decarbonization targets.
Its implementation is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2027. AEDIVE is calling for its implementation to be accelerated because other European countries already allow operators to obtain additional revenue through equivalent instruments.
That economic flow could help deploy new stations, sustain sites with still low utilization, or partially shift to more competitive charging prices.
In parallel, the Auto+ Plan could increase registrations through direct subsidies and centralized management. The more electric vehicles that enter circulation, the greater the available demand to absorb renewable energy production. The challenge will be ensuring that this charging occurs when the system actually needs it.