The Ministry of Environment, Infrastructure, Territory and Recovery has given the green light to Kenergy Solar to construct the photovoltaic parks FV Kenerjona I and FV Kenerjona II. These projects, which received environmental approval in January 2025, now have the Generalitat's permission to begin construction, pending municipal building permits.
The FV Kenerjona I plant will be located in Castalla, in the Sarganella and El Forcall areas, east of the urban center. It will occupy a fenced plot of almost 70 hectares and will have an installed capacity of 40.8 MW with 70,924 solar panels. Meanwhile, Kenerjona II will be built in Ibi, south of the Ibi urban center, with a similar capacity over a fenced area of 61 hectares and 59,808 photovoltaic panels.
In total, both plants will cover 131 hectares of fenced land and more than 130,000 solar panels, with a total capacity of 81 MW. The overall investment amounts to 38 million euros, broken down into 20.5 million for Castalla (including the transformer substation and internal wiring) and 17.5 million for Ibi.
One of the most controversial aspects is the 19-kilometer power line that will evacuate energy from a new substation in Castalla to another in Mutxamel, and from there to the Jijona substation. This line has generated strong local opposition in Tibi and among environmentalists, as its initial project envisages 18.4 kilometers being overhead and only 958 meters underground. Ecologistas en Acción warns that 20 towers of the line invade the Special Protection Area for Birds (ZEPA) of Montnegre, in Mutxamel, where Decree 12/2023 of the Consell explicitly prohibits renewable energy installations.
“"We have been informed that all of Tibi's demands have been taken into account and that the presented project will be thoroughly studied, currently being a draft that the Territorial Service must review and which is still in the preliminary stages."
The proliferation of these projects has led local councils such as those in Castalla and Tibi to suspend licenses to try and halt these installations and regulate their location. However, the Generalitat approved measures in the summer of 2024, within the Administrative Simplification Law, which urbanistically facilitate the implementation of solar farms and make it more difficult for local councils to oppose them.
Additionally, Castalla has another project approved by the Central Government, the FV Castalla, south of the municipal area, with 150,000 solar panels and a capacity of 99.75 MW. The council already announced in 2024 that it would not grant building permits for this mega-plant due to its opposition and that it was working on regulating suitable areas for such installations.
