Spanish village promotes the production of clean energy

More than 20 years have passed since the formation of the Valdepiélagos ecovillage, very close to Madrid, the Spanish capital. Its inhabitants assumed the commitment to care for the environment, through the creation of a set of bioclimatic houses that are supplied with clean energy to reduce the ecological footprint in their municipality.

Currently, the so-called “ecobarrio” is a fundamental pillar in “the fight against climate change and the promotion of local development through projects in which entrepreneurs participate.

Víctor Torre Vaquero, co-founder of Valdepiélagos, stresses that they were interested in achieving a more sustainable lifestyle, so they decided to replicate scenarios they had seen in European countries such as Sweden or Germany. So far they have consolidated “a community with a strong ecological and environmental awareness, including the use of renewable energies such as photovoltaics.“

The community operates in the cooperative mode, on a 30,000 m2 plot. For the construction of the houses they used “ecological and natural insulating materials“, with the aspiration of creating a new social, economic and energetic model.

It is important to highlight that all the chalets of the eco-neighborhood have their own vegetable garden, water tanks that allow to collect enough water to irrigate the garden during the summer and huge solar panels on the roofs that allow to supply the house with electricity and heating“.

The initiative has paid off, through a change of mentality oriented towards sustainability. The almost 600 inhabitants managed to boost trade and incorporate young and elderly entrepreneurs to achieve a symbiosis between experience and innovation. The latter comes “mostly from Erasmus students and European programs that send four young people annually to develop their projects in the villages and thus be able to approach the reality of rural environments and this model of life based on ecology and sustainability”.

In the development of the community we can not forget the development fostered by the technologies, because with its arrival the door was opened to online sales, teleworking and the support of NGOs such as the Iberian Iberian Ecovillage Network (RIE in Spanish) in charge of connecting initiatives and projects in each of the ecovillages registered in its platform.

M.Pino

Source: El Mundo