FRAUD on Spain's solar energy farms:

Many of the solar parks that stretch across vast tracts of the Spanish countryside are guilty of fraud, Spain's National Energy Commission (CNE) has found.

In the past two years, Spain's solar industry has grown by a spectacular 900%. The country now has the third largest solar capacity in the world, behind the United States and Germany.

But an ongoing investigation by Spanish authorities has so far unearthed nearly 4,200 photovoltaic installations that were falsely registered as being online by a 30 September deadline in order to receive higher levels of subsidy from power companies. According to the CNE report, however, none of the questionable installations, which are located in 1,447 or 13.3% of the country's solar parks, is actually producing any power.