acciona energía and noáin

Five hours of class can be a drag, I'll admit it freely, but learning a whole lot about something and then seeing it work in the real world is a pretty nifty set-up.  This week our focus was geothermal energy systems.  They are neat, but our professor never sold me on the idea that they are the way to go.  I'm still waiting to pass judgement on that once I learn a bit more about the costs and design flaws of the other alternative green resources.

Our first of four field trips took us Spain's first zero emissions building that is owned by Acciona Energía.  We had spent a solid amount of time discussing the different technologies and architectural tricks that were implementing in the design of the building, and I think we all enjoyed walking around and knowing what we were actually looking it.  Built 2006-2007 Acciona's headquarters combine bioclimatic design, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, geothermal, and biodiesel technologies to achieve zero emission status.  True, it was more expensive to build than it's neighbors in the industrial office park, but it will recover that cost in energy savings in 10 years--after 10 it's all profit and zero harm to the environment.  I was pretty impressed.

We then hopped back on the bus and journeyed out to Noáin, a Bosque town whose government has decided to take an interest in sustainability and community and had made some impressive strides.  Our poor professor had a time with trying to translate for us...he was required to translate from Bosque (his second language) to English (his third language which he hasn't spoken very much in 15 years).  He didn't even get to use Spanish.

The main reason we were actually there was to see their main building that has a geothermal installation, but as it was already installed (and therefor buried underground and very out of sight) we all found the gardens and the other bioclimatic buildings rather more interesting.

I of course didn't remember to bring my camera, but this trip was probably the best one to forget it for because geothermally there wasn't much to photograph.  The things I wished I could've snapped a couple of shots of were the community gardens/chickens, and the beautiful "Japanese Garden" that they have developed in an effort to be more sustainable.  It's a pretty spectacular system and a totally different outlook on living.  One thing I have found here in Spain that just always seems stronger than it is in the US is their sense of community.  It's kind of nice.

We are off to Barcelona this weekend and I am so thrilled.  Wish we had more than two days, but it'll have to be enough I suppose :)