Three billion euros is what it costs to make Spain more environmentally aware
THE Government has announced a one-billion-euro package in its bid to make Spain more environmentally friendly.
If it is successful in the General Election in March, the PSOE Government will spend one billion euros in subsidies to renovate energy-inefficient homes before 2012.
A further two billion euros in credit will be handed out every year over the next four years to make homes up to 60 per cent more energy efficient.
Madrid has also promised funds of 200 million euros to improve energy efficiency in schools and public buildings in towns and cities of more than 50,000 people.
The Government has placed the environment at the top of its election manifesto as it seeks to win a second term in office.
“The red lights are flashing and we are at the point of no return. I ask all citizens to act with urgency and to put Spain at the forefront of the challenge to fight climate change,” Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said at a news conference to announce the investments.
Although Spain has placed an emphasis on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, its rapid economic expansion in the past 15 years has pushed it wide of the Kyoto protocol targets to which it agreed in 1990.
The country’s carbon dioxide output in 2006 was 48 per cent higher than that of 1990. Its 2012 target is a rise of no more than 15 per cent of its base level of 288 million tonnes of annual carbon dioxide emissions.
