• While regulations attempt to optimize every available megawatt, access capacity data shows that industrial demand continues to consume the grid at a speed that no regulatory “patch” can keep up with.

  • Spain has an infrastructure problem, and the regulatory response is, at best, an intelligent management of scarcity—not its solution.

  • Digitalization and technical regulation cannot indefinitely substitute for investment in physical infrastructure. Spanish industry cannot operate under a logic of “consented intermittency.”

February 27, 2026

MITECO (Ministry for the Ecological Transition) and the CNMC (National Commission on Markets and Competition) have put forward two proposals that reconfigure the rules for electricity grid access: the Draft Royal Decree on technical connection requirements and the Resolution on flexible access permits. Although their stated goal is to organize the system, prevent speculation, and optimize infrastructure use, their effects on industrial energy management merit broader reflection. These technically ambitious rules raise a reasonable doubt: are we facing a structural solution or a sophisticated system for managing infrastructure scarcity?

There comes a moment when scarcity stops being an efficiency problem and becomes a viability problem. Spain has reached that moment. With 85.7% of substations saturated and a loss of nearly 3 GW of capacity in just two months, the question for a company wanting to electrify its activity is no longer where it is convenient to settle, but where it is even possible to connect.

While regulations attempt to optimize every available megawatt, access capacity data demonstrates that industrial demand continues to consume the grid at a speed that no regulatory patch can follow. What these new rules do not do—and it is worth saying clearly—is create new grid capacity. Spain has an infrastructure problem, and the regulatory response is, at best, an intelligent management of scarcity, not its solution.

The New Regulatory Paradigm: Mandatory Robustness and Conditional Supply

The administration’s response to this technical bottleneck rests on two major pillars intended to reconfigure the electrical system’s “instruction manual.” The first is MITECO’s commitment to the mandatory robustness of demand facilities. The Draft Royal Decree imposes more demanding minimum operational requirements so that new consumers can withstand severe disturbances, such as voltage dips, without disconnecting from the grid. The Ministry’s logic holds that if industries are more resilient to system failures, it reduces the “cascade effect” that currently blocks access capacity in dozens of nearby nodes. In practice, this technological shielding seeks to unlock megawatts of access currently blocked by dynamic security criteria, albeit at the cost of shifting the responsibility for system stability onto the companies’ investment balance sheets.

Parallel to this, the CNMC has moved forward with the institutionalization of flexible access permits, a figure that definitively breaks with the traditional model of firm and guaranteed power. This tool is proposed as an emergency solution for projects located in saturated areas where the only way to enter the “electrical highway” is by accepting that, if there is a traffic jam, the industrial consumer will be the first to be pulled over. Under this scheme, a company can obtain its connection if it consents to its supply being limited or interrupted by the grid operator during moments of stress or lack of infrastructure availability. It is, in essence, flexibility turned into a bargaining chip to obtain the right to “plug in,” but with fine print that introduces operational uncertainty difficult for any energy manager to digest.

The real risk to competitiveness lies in the fact that the CNMC resolution itself is categorical in clarifying that this consumption expectation must not be confused, under any circumstances, with a guarantee of supply. The new framework establishes that applied access limitations will not be considered interruptions for the purposes of service quality, which cancels any possibility of claiming compensation for lost profits derived from imposed shutdowns. For a plant with continuous processes, being forced to reduce consumption immediately—or in less than three minutes—following an operator’s order means operating in a scenario of technical precariousness. Ultimately, this regulatory rollout allows more projects to get a connection permit on paper, but none will have the security of having the power they need at every moment of the day.

What Changes for Industry

The new regulatory proposals pursue a legitimate goal: to avoid the accumulation of permits that do not translate into real projects and to free up capacity for viable initiatives. The problem is that the design of the mechanisms to achieve this may generate unintended effects on industry.

To understand them, we must start from a diagnosis we have been highlighting at the FIE (Industry and Energy Forum) for some time: the Spanish grid still largely responds to the industrial logic of the 20th century. Capacity exists, but not always where today’s industry needs it. What is required is not just more grid, but strategic planning aligned with the actual location of productive activity and the flexibility that new industrial models demand. The MITECO and CNMC rules do not address that mismatch; they merely limit themselves to optimizing what is already there.

The new framework has an immediate effect: electrifying will cost more. Complying with the required technical specs (control systems, dynamic response capacity, and in many cases, own storage) represents an additional investment on top of the connection cost. But the deepest impact is not economic, but operational. Continuous industrial processes (kilns, chemicals, metallurgy, advanced manufacturing) need a stable and predictable supply. A flexible permit that can trigger restrictions during critical hours is not the same as a firm power contract. For many sectors, this difference is not a technical nuance: it is the difference between being able to plan production or not. Added to this is a structural asymmetry: flexible permits favor those who can adapt (data centers, hydrogen production, variable demand), while continuous process industry is left in a comparatively weaker position. Access is expanded, but not on equal terms.

Three Risks That Must Not Be Normalized

First, the transfer of operational risk occurs because the flexible permit effectively turns the consumer into the system’s buffer; for an industrial plant, an unscheduled shutdown can mean millions in losses or equipment damage, meaning that calling this “flexibility” does not eliminate the risk but merely displaces it.

Second, regulatory uncertainty poses a threat because industry does not operate with the same logic as generation projects, and since investment decisions respond to complex strategic plans with long amortization horizons, the recurring modification of access criteria becomes a competitive factor that can divert projects toward territories with more predictable frameworks.

Third, the autonomy of energy management is called into question by granting operators the capacity for remote limitation over facilities, raising a fundamental concern about who ultimately holds control over production and highlighting that digital integration must not compromise the industry’s ability to make its own operational decisions.

The FIE Position: “Consented Intermittency” is Not an Industrial Policy

At the Industry and Energy Forum, we recognize that MITECO and CNMC measures respond to a real urgency with the available instruments. Better managing existing capacity is preferable to doing nothing, and organizing access is an essential step toward improving system efficiency.

But our position is firm: digitalization and technical regulation cannot indefinitely substitute for investment in physical infrastructure. Spanish industry cannot operate under a logic of “consented intermittency.” Access to energy must be predictable to be competitive, and electrical planning cannot be decoupled from industrial planning. The grid must be an enabler of productive transformation, not a rationing mechanism.

There is also a risk that should be named clearly: that the new framework normalizes a situation that should be temporary—that industry ends up accepting congestion and lack of supply firmness as permanent structural costs instead of demanding that the congestion be resolved. If that happens, Spain will have chosen to administer its grid deficit rather than correct it. In an environment of international competition for industrial investment, that choice has consequences: uncertainty tips the scales toward destinations with more predictable access.

Flexibility should be a service that industry provides to the system voluntarily and for remuneration, not the only way to obtain a basic right such as energy access.

Regulation Orders the Present; Investment Builds the Future

The Spanish energy transition does not have a renewables problem. It has a grid problem. Generation continues to grow and is hitting record highs—with 150,902 GWh of green production in 2025 according to the latest Opina 360 Renewable Energy Observatory report—but the transmission and distribution capacity to bring that energy to industrial hubs moves at a different pace.

The MITECO and CNMC documents are a serious attempt to avoid the collapse of an infrastructure at its limit. But the success of the transition will not be measured by how many rules are published, but by how many factories manage to connect with real guarantees of security, price, and stability. Regulation can order the present. Only investment in the grid can create the necessary space for the future.

The relevant question is not whether the new permits are more or less flexible. It is whether Spain has a roadmap to build, with the urgency the data demands, the grid its industry needs for the coming decades. That question, as of yet, does not have a sufficient answer.