Outlook is sunny: working with Iberdrola in Spain and Portugal

Release date:

28 July 2022

Accelerating the move to EV charging and hydrogen in her home country has our Madrid-based executive vice president of strategy, sustainability & ventures very excited for the future

🕒 2 min read | 📖 Feature| 💡 Why it matters

Giulia Chierchia, EVP strategy, sustainability & ventures

Occasionally, we work on projects that hit particularly close to home. And our new plan to team up on electric vehicle (EV) charging and green hydrogen (H2) in Spain and Portugal does just that.

I live in Madrid with my two kids, and I drive a hybrid. And I know personally some of the amazing people at our refinery, around 400 kilometres from Madrid in Valencia, who are eager to start developing hydrogen.

So, bp’s plans to enter into a strategic collaboration agreement with renewables powerhouse Iberdrola is important to me personally. But also an important step towards helping to reduce Spain and Portugal’s emissions and contributing to decarbonized transport and industry.

Here are four reasons why our planned partnership is so exciting:

We will broaden availability of EV charging

This deal aims to make it more convenient than ever for drivers to charge, and charge quickly. Range anxiety – when your battery is running low and you’re not quite sure where and when you’ll be able to charge – is still a major obstacle to EV adoption globally. I chose a hybrid for now until our infrastructure is more developed. bp’s partnership with Iberdrola will help to get more EV charging locations quicker in Spain, helping drivers and commercial fleets to speed up the overall switch to EVs.

We’re combining our strengths. Iberdrola is the leader in public charging infrastructure, while bp has an extensive network of 800 retail sites in Spain, so we have the land to easily place EV chargers.

We will help accelerate the EV transition

One in every 10 new cars sold in Spain is an EV. There’s a lot of growth and opportunity in EV charging. Spain and Portugal together is a market of around 30 million cars and the share of EVs is growing rapidly – today, representing about 10% of new car sales. The first 5,000 fast charging points are planned to be in operation by 2025.

We will combine strengths for progressing green H2 delivery in our partnership

Lightsource bp’s Vendimia solar project in Zaragoza, Spain

Our green hydrogen collaboration will take our individual strengths and combine them to create a powerful outcome. It can marry Iberdrola’s world-class track record in renewables development and its global customer base with bp’s experience in gas processing, trading and its global customer portfolio.

We are poised for affordable lower carbon hydrogen

Giulia visits the team at bp’s Castellón refinery in Valencia, home to our green hydrogen project that will be part of the agreement

We’re set up to make green hydrogen really flow. We already have the people and the kit in Spain to make green hydrogen a reality.

Our Castellón refinery has been operating since 1967 and, in 2016, started co-processing renewable feedstock too. It now stands ready to transform further and help other industries to transform too.

Hydrogen, and fuels derived from it, are a good low carbon solution to power transport and the industry around the refinery. Green hydrogen is developed using renewable power, such as wind or solar, and Spain and Portugal are blessed with sunshine in abundance. It means that our JV could produce some of the cheapest green hydrogen globally.

💡 Why it matters

EV charging and hydrogen are two of our high-growth transition growth businesses, which we believe will play a critical part in our transformation from international oil company to integrated energy company.

At bp, we believe that electrification is key to helping the world get to net zero. To help drive EV adoption, we want to provide the fastest, most convenient network of charging – more than 100,000 points worldwide by 2030.

Meanwhile, Hydrogen is set to play a key role in decarbonizing power, industry and mobility. By decarbonizing our own operations and developing production hubs for both green and blue hydrogen, we plan to provide competitive global supply. We’re already working towards that with 15 planned hydrogen projects and partnerships across Europe, the Middle East, and Australia.