The Diplomat
Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain inaugurated Iberdrola’s Innovation and Training Campus in San Agustín de Guadalix (Madrid) yesterday, in a ceremony at which they were accompanied by the company’s chairman, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, and the Minister of Education, Isabel Celaá.
Iberdrola has invested 300 million euros in a campus that Sánchez Galán defined as “the flagship” of the company’s commitment to innovation and which aims to serve as a knowledge hub to accelerate the energy transition and the green economy.
Located some 30 kilometres from Madrid, the complex covers an area of 18 hectares, with seven sustainable buildings for training and business activity, an auditorium and a residence for a hundred people.
Although yesterday was its official premiere, the corporate campus entered into service in 2016 in a first phase, after which other spaces have been progressively opened.
“This campus is a centre of excellence conceived from the conviction that the future does not belong to those who guess it, but to those who create it. We are a company that does. We dream, but we do”, said Sánchez Galán at the beginning of the visit.
The entourage accompanying the King and Queen visited some of the classrooms and training workshops, where some 13,000 people pass through every year to receive training in different fields.
In addition to Iberdola personnel, professionals from other companies and firefighters, police officers and members of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) train to deal with incidents that may arise in energy facilities.
The King and Queen were able to learn about the new techniques used by Iberdrola in its offshore wind farms – which are not yet permitted in Spain – where structures measuring more than 330 metres are used, a height greater than that of the Eiffel Tower.
They were also given details of the green hydrogen projects, one of the areas in which the company is investing the most due to the possibilities it offers for reducing CO2 emissions.
The tour continued through the four forests planted in the courtyard of the building that recreate different ecosystems to learn about the project to reforest 20 million trees, for which drones equipped with seed dispensers will be used.
In the training workshops, they observed a driving simulator in which the operators are trained to be able to handle themselves in disaster scenarios such as the one caused by the “Filomena” storm last January.
Another stop was to see a recreation of a home of the near future, equipped with self-consumption elements, such as solar panels, electric battery chargers and an aerothermal heating system.
Outside the building, the King and Queen were able to see one of the new blades that Iberdrola is installing in its offshore wind farms, which are more than a hundred metres long.
The visit to the campus came after the new Climate Change and Energy Transition Law was passed by Congress last Thursday, which is only pending before the Senate, a fact that Sánchez Galán considered to be “great news for Spain”.
In his opening speech, the Chairman of Iberdrola advocated that the recovery phase of the crisis generated by the pandemic “leaves no one behind” and represents a new stage to make a firm commitment to a green economy, for which the company will invest 150,000 million euros until 2030.
