The City Council is committed to installing solar panels in the 35 buildings in neighborhoods, with European aid for energy efficiency
Spend 69% less on energy consumption and generate the environmental benefit equivalent to planting 3,571 trees. These are the effects that the installation of solar panels will have in the 35 social premises that the City Council has distributed throughout the municipality. The deputy mayor, Ana Belén Castejón, and the councilor for Sustainable City, Cristina Mora, yesterday presented a study prepared by the Cruzsol consultancy on the viability and results of this investment, which amounts to 470,000 euros, to qualify for a call for European funds . In case of obtaining them, up to 329,000 would be financed with that line of financing. The remaining 141,000 will be paid by the City Council.
The deadline to present the projects ends in December 2023, but the City Council technicians are working to do it much earlier and be among the first municipalities, to have more options to obtain aid.
Energy consumption has increased the bill paid by the City Council by 1.5 million euros, added to public lighting and the facilities it owns. The implementation of LED technology gradually reduces this impact, in the case of street lamps in streets and squares. But the government team wants to go further and introduce saving measures, also in municipal buildings. With solar panels, CO2 emissions into the atmosphere drop by 58%. “In this way we commit ourselves to complying with the Mayors for Climate Agreement, included in the objectives of the 2030 program,” Castejón stressed.
Regarding savings, the mayor stressed that “if we get the subsidy, they will finance 70% of the cost.” “With that money, the amortization would take place in just over three years. If we don’t get it, it would be in just over four, “he added.
First, those who spend the most
For this reason, the will of the government team is to carry out the plan, whether or not there are external funds, because in the medium term it can only generate savings and environmental benefits. The municipal technicians are already preparing a project that emphasizes the social premises in which the installation will have a higher cost, because it also means saving more money on the works if European aid is obtained,
“We started with social premises, because all or almost all of them have diaphanous roofs and it is easy to place solar panels on them,” said Castejón, who added that the City Council also has in its portfolio to apply this technology in more important municipal buildings.
“Those that have some type of installation are the Bus Station and the Ramón Alonso Luzzy Cultural Center,” said Cristina Mora. A municipal spokesman indicated that there are also some sports halls that have them, such as Albujón and La Palma.
also in schools
Castejón recalled that the installation of solar panels is also included in the plans coordinated with the Autonomous Community to remove the asbestos-cement roofs in some thirty schools and institutes. “We’ve already done it in a dozen of them,” he said. He added that the presence of fiber cement is one of the main complications for the placement of plates in other buildings in which the roofs are not flat or diaphanous.
Adult trees would have the same beneficial effect for the environment as the placement of solar panels in the 35 social premises, due to the reduction of CO2 emissions.
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