Renewable energy boomed in Spain until recently due to generous government subsidies. However the government has taking on an unsustainable $35 billion in debt doing this and is reversing course. Not only will subsidies by slashed, this will be done retroactively. Thus, investors in wind and solar farms there may find they receive no further subsidies going forward. Thus, their government guaranteed investments may become worthless.
This appears to have been a classic bubble. Unwary small investors got sucked in and may lose everything.
Reforms could have unintended political and social fallout. Around 55,000 families have mortgaged their life savings and assets to invest in small solar farms in the countryside — with the guarantee of government-backed returns — in a bid to offset falling incomes from farming.