Spanish oil major Repsol has opened its first two solar PV farms, which form part of the 126.6MW Kappa project in the central Spanish town of Manzanares in the province of Ciudad Real.

The €100m solar project is distributed across three plants. Two of them, Perseo Fotón I and Perseo Fotón II, are already operational, with a combined capacity of 90.5MW. The third plant, Perseo Fotón III, is still under development and will add another 36.1MW when it comes online.

"This milestone represents yet another step toward our goal of becoming a net zero emissions company by 2050," María Victoria Zingoni, Repsol's executive managing director of client and low-carbon generation, said during the opening ceremony.

"It's an important project for the region of Castilla La Mancha, for Manzanares, and for Repsol, in an autonomous region where we foresee further development of our commitment to a multi-energy model.”

Kappa is one of seven renewable energy projects Repsol is developing on the Iberian Peninsula. The oil firm is also developing two other 200MW-plus solar projects in Spain, and more than 1GW in additional wind power capacity across the country.

Repsol together with a consortium of EDPR, Engie and Principle Power is also part of the 25MW WindFloat Atlantic project, the world’s first semi-submersible wind farm that is fully operational and producing power of the coast of Portugal.

In the US, Repsol in May had announced it was purchasing 40% PV and battery storage company Hecate, which has a project portfolio of more than 40GW.

Repsol has the goal to become a net zero emission company by 2050. To achieve that, the company targets to develop 7.5GW of what it calls low-emissions generation capacity by 2025 and double that by 2030.

Repsol includes gas-fired generation in its definition of low emission generation – a notion rejected by climate activists, who consider all fossil generation is harming the climate - but most of the company’s projects in that category are in renewable energy.