Energy efficiency

• 04/22/2010
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On 20 March, during a meeting between businesses and Andalusian unions, the government announced that as soon as possible, it would undertake an energy efficiency program in public buildings.

Likewise, sustainability is a recurring objective.

On the other hand, the Kyoto Protocol requires that CO2 emissions be reduced.

Lastly, ecological organizations and the public in general are demanding that the visual impact of energy production systems be reduced. 

At the intersection of the hypothetical circles derived from the aforementioned premises, is a type of energy that has been used since distant times and currently, used frequently in Europe, and which consists of using the earth as a heat exchanger. This system, which is called low-enthalpy geothermal energy, is beginning to gain recognition in Spain. Some businesses committed to sustainability, such as the Swedish company IKEA, already use this type of energy in their buildings. 

There is a platform, GEOPLAT, which brings together the players in the geothermal energy industry in Spain, indicating that this system is already being considered by the government as well as private initiatives.

However, its definitive implementation requires more than institutional support. Everyone agrees on its worth but no one, apart from a few adventurers, uses it for practical purposes.

The government must lead the process of using this system in order for it to be recognized as a real alternative. Public buildings, train and underground stations, hospitals, etc., constitute many square metrs in which, with the use of geothermal energy, a large amount of energy consumption could be saved compared with the current systems and, ostensibly, CO2 emissions could be reduced. We are talking about saving billions of euros and thousands of tons of CO2 and, therefore, it seems evident that geothermal energy is more than an alternative.