Ibiza’s electricity demand reached an all-time high in 2025, while locally generated solar power covered just 1% of consumption, according to environmental group Amics de la Terra. The organisation warns that installing more solar panels and electric vehicles will not solve the island’s energy problems unless overall demand is also reduced.
Amics de la Terra has warned that Ibiza’s energy model is increasingly fragile, particularly its electricity system, and is calling for a planned reduction in energy consumption as an essential step towards a sustainable energy transition.
Marking World Energy Saving Day on 21 October, the environmental organisation says the island’s electricity demand hit a historic record in 2025. Carbon emissions also increased rather than falling, it adds.
According to figures cited by the group, 61% of the electricity consumed in Ibiza was supplied through the interconnector with Mallorca, while 38% came from the island’s thermal power station. Locally generated solar power accounted for just 1% of electricity demand. These figures do not include some off-grid self-consumption installations.
Amics de la Terra acknowledges that solar photovoltaic generation has considerable room to expand, but questions how far it can realistically go towards meeting the island’s overall energy needs.
Record electricity demand and dependence on imported energy
The organisation argues that, according to experts’ assessments, meeting 100% of Ibiza’s electricity demand exclusively through solar photovoltaic installations would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Covering the island’s entire energy needs would be even more challenging, it says, because electricity accounts for only around 20% of total energy consumption.
For Amics de la Terra, the figures demonstrate that “there is no magic wand and no ‘green’ energy-saving solution that does not begin, first and foremost, with an orderly reduction in demand”. The organisation sums up this approach in one word: degrowth.
In its statement, the group declares that the so-called energy transition has failed. It clarifies, however, that its criticism is not directed at the renewable energy and decarbonisation model that environmental organisations have advocated for decades.
Instead, its objections focus on a system that, it argues, has been shaped by multinational companies that have reinvented themselves around “green capitalism” as a way to keep expanding and accumulating wealth. The organisation says governments, from local councils to the European Union, have accepted this model as the only alternative.
Amics de la Terra argues that covering Ibiza with thousands of solar panels and electric vehicles, while leaving a constantly expanding model of production and consumption unchanged, is not the solution but part of the problem.
The group also warns that the island’s electricity grid is vulnerable. It points to repeated power cuts during storms as evidence of its weaknesses and argues that the existing network would be unable to support the complete electrification of the economy.
Nevertheless, the organisation recognises that large-scale renewable energy projects — particularly solar photovoltaic power in Ibiza’s case — have an important role to play in moving away from fossil fuels. It opposes further oil exploration, both in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, and calls for the definitive dismantling of nuclear power, which it describes as dangerous.
Tourism, construction and hotter summers drive energy demand
Amics de la Terra links Ibiza’s steadily rising electricity demand to what it considers the unlimited growth of the resident and seasonal population, construction and tourism. It also highlights the growing need for air conditioning as summers become increasingly hot.
In the organisation’s view, a genuine energy transition requires reducing both energy and material consumption and adapting human activity to the planet’s limits. In Ibiza, it argues, this means challenging an economic and urban development model that has far exceeded the island’s carrying capacity.
Water desalination is one example cited by the group. The process consumes enormous amounts of energy, an impact that Amics de la Terra says is often overlooked. The organisation also criticises plans to build another desalination plant on the island.
The group points out that Balearic Islands Law 10/2019 requires municipalities to adopt Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans, known by the Spanish acronym PACES, with emissions-reduction targets.
However, it warns that decarbonisation and electrification measures should not be used to justify further expansion. It specifically cites the construction of additional desalination plants, increased reliance on private electric vehicles and the installation of solar photovoltaic systems linked to new buildings.
The organisation also wants energy planning to account for non-electric energy consumption, which it says is a shared responsibility.
This includes aviation, which relies on kerosene; maritime transport, which depends on fuel oil; and road transport, which uses diesel. Amics de la Terra stresses that Ibiza’s tourism industry, commerce and food security all depend on these transport systems. Electrifying them, it argues, will remain difficult regardless of progress in renewable energy.
Reducing demand and expanding shared solar power
In response to these challenges, Amics de la Terra is calling for greater use of passive energy-saving measures. One priority, it says, should be renovating existing buildings to improve their energy efficiency before continuing to build new homes.
The organisation also supports the expansion of local energy communities and shared self-consumption schemes promoted by the Balearic Energy Institute (Institut Balear de l’Energia), alongside more restrained energy use in homes and businesses.
It also argues that summer energy poverty must be addressed, while warning against approaches that focus exclusively on air conditioning units. Instead, it proposes establishing publicly accessible, free-to-use cooling centres where people can find relief from extreme heat.
Finally, Amics de la Terra believes Ibiza has an opportunity to become a “large-scale laboratory” for moving away from fossil fuels and leading the way towards a new energy model in the Mediterranean.
Achieving that ambition, the organisation concludes, requires only “political will and courage”.
