A schedule will be drawn up annually with actions to be carried out, with the target of implementing around
12 a year. These measures will include:
o Green Household Programme: monitoring the emissions generated by families, thematic training
regarding sustainability and savings, a meeting point between families.
o Driving greater control of the energy consumption in local council housing by means of
an emphasis on installing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in 60 local council
housing units and working with them on changing habits.
o Sessions with associations on climate change. Five modules will be run to provide
useful information to associations interested in receiving in training about
climate change.
o Partnership with Alhóndiga Bilbao: training sessions, dissemination of the actions carried out
regarding energy efficiency and preparing technical materials in this areas.
o Organising forums and film seasons where different aspects of climate change and energy efficiency
are considered, with the help of sector experts who can contribute different perspectives
and answer the questions from the public in that regard.
o Holding events open to the general public to foster energy saving, such as
the “Day Without Money”, “Barter Markets”, “Craft Markets” or fairs where
habits and techniques are encouraged that help to cut energy consumption.
Ongoing actions through the year, to be implemented every month:
o Preparing a weekly newsletter with news and information on activities and opportunities
related to climate change and energy efficiency and saving (350 subscribers in 2010).
o Managing the BIO - Bilbao Climate Change Office website: updating the
most important news about climate change.
o Managing the Facebook, Twitter and Flickr social media where BIO - Bilbao Climate Change Office
has an account.
o Managing the Biotrueke website: encouraging reuse and lower consumption, where
users can exchange or sell second-hand items.
Progressive introduction of the Cosmópolis system. Since 2009, Bilbao City Council has opted
for that system which enables the optimisation of the design and positioning of the burner and which, together with the
special reflector, considerably improves the optical performance. This allows the distance to be increased,
thus decreasing the number of light points needed to achieve the desired light efficiency.
The existing 34,713 luminaries will be progressively replaced between now and 2020, by implementing the
Cosmópolis system or other similar or better ones that come on to the market.
Replacing waste collection vehicles, cleaning vehicles and sweepers with electric
vehicles. Introducing electric cleaning vehicles means greenhouse
gas emissions are cut, there is no emission of pollutants at the operation site or
noise pollution, so they are more suitable for using on the streets. On the other hand, this type of technology
has a more immediate response than that of a conventional vehicle, less mechanical losses and
a better energy performance. Finally, energy can be recovered after the vehicles brake, which
means self-supply and lower electricity consumption when charging the batteries.
Bilbao City Council's cleaning vehicle fleet has 250 vehicles. The action
implemented so far has resulted in 28 diesel vehicles (11% of the fleet) being replaced by
as many other electric ones. The number of electric vehicles is expected to be doubled by 2020.
Replacing new mechanical sweeping equipment with others that are more accurate and efficient. These new
systems mean a significant cut in the volume of water needed for the correct use of the
sweepers and, therefore, energy saving associated to water saving is obtained.
BIO - Bilbao Climate Change Office is an initiative of Bilbao City Council's Department for City Planning and
the Environment, whose goal is to raise awareness and educate the general public
about climate change, with a focus on actions that the general public can implement
in order to reduce the amount of waste generated, and on recycling and reusing. The courses of actions
prioritised are:
o Working in conjunction with the municipality's Local Agenda 21 and the School Agenda 21 to
encourage saving, recycling and recovering. The actions are focused, on the one hand, on school children and, on
the other hand, their parents.
o Working with the City Council's Youth Department to run recycling workshops
for children between 9 and 11 years old.
o Creating the figure of street educator tasked with raising awareness among the general public
by providing waste-related information: reducing, reusing and recycling.
o Green Household Programme: monitoring emissions generated by 40 families and advice
related to their waste.
o Sessions on waste for associations. Providing useful information for associations
interested in receiving training on climate change and urban waste.
o Responsible consumption programme for school children. The programme consists of a responsible
consumption workshop making toys and games out of recycled materials. The plan is also to
hold an open day for the general public to showcase the toys produced and encourage
a toy exchange between the school children.
o Managing the Biotrueke website.
Producing energy using renewable sources means using resources
without worrying that they will run out and without the consequences arising from the products resulting the exploitation of fossil
fuels (such as greenhouse gases, pollutants and toxic hydrocarbon derivatives). Photovoltaic solar
energy allows the energy released by the sun, as solar radiation, to be converted directed into
electricity, achieving energy saving and avoiding the production of greenhouse
gases.
There is a plan to install a 15 kW photovoltaic plant on the roof of the new
City Council building.
Preparing the BIDEGORRIS (cycle lane) PLAN. The Bilbao Cycling Lane Special Plan was prepared in 2007
with the aim of increasing the length in km of cyclable sections in the city and encourage their use. Since
then, the cycle lanes have doubled in length up to a total of 78 km.
Improving the current bike-sharing service An automatic service will be set up and the number of
loan points will be increased, along with the schedules, number of bikes and docking stations.
The council housing authority has a rental stock of 4,000 homes as rented social housing
and 900 commercial premises in Bilbao. Around 1,000 of these housing units are considered to be new
(built after 1985) and the others are part of an older stock with different types that range
from timber structure buildings from 1919, concrete buildings from the 1940s, or the
new towns of the 1960s, to buildings from the 1970s that already met the Basic Building
Standards.
The average number of housing units / year that fall vacant and need renovating stands at 150 units.
70% of these are part of the old stock, i.e., the plan is to work around 150 housing units per
years. The work planned to be carried out in each unit is (based on audits conducted in six
buildings):
- Replacing windows with low-emission double glazing ones and 8 cm
roof insulation. The baseline is, in general timber window frames without thermal break.
- Roof insulation (8 cm layer). The baseline is, in general, timber
structures or slabs without insulation.
Working with Bizkaia Provincial Council (through GARBIKER) to set up a
composting plant at the Artigas landfill to treat the city's pruning and gardening waste.
Along with this waste, the plan is to collect the vegetable organic waste from the local supermarkets and
markets in order to produce good quality plant organic compost.
Pilot scheme to collect plant organic waste in the Deusto neighbourhood to
be used to produce compost.
The aim is to achieve 10% de composted waste out of the total generated (in 2005, the compositing
waste was 1%).
The Bilbao building stock has around 150 public buildings. The measure envisages
actions to measure municipal buildings include energy efficiency criteria with the
aim of reducing their electric and thermal consumption:
1. Heating:
- Replacing low energy-efficient boilers by high energy-efficient ones such as
condensation boilers in municipal buildings.
- Improving the operating programming of the gas heating system at the expense of
electric heat pumps.
- Replacing one- or two-stage burners by more efficient modulating burners.
2. Electricity:
- Replacing T8 lamps with 18, 36 and 58 W powers by other T5 tubes with 14, 24 and 49 W powers, and
replacing electronic ballast ignition equipment.
- Installing motion sensors in corridors, offices and toilets.
- Installing Active Management Systems in order to control consumption and
bills, installing meters at the most important consumption points, in order to avoid regular
peaks.
• Controlling energy consumption during the time that the building is empty.
• Generating alerts regarding excess energy consumption.
• Redesigning working procedures aimed at better energy use.
• Better allocation of resources in future investment plans.
• Awareness raising among the users and workers by means of displaying the data obtained.
• Increasing the use of the heating system, by eliminating the obstacles that
make radiators less efficient. Electric consumption from the
climate control equipment would drop.
The buildings in question have been separated according to their functionality in the following
categories:
a) Offices / Libraries / Senior Centres / Hostels / Libraries / etc.
b) Publicly-run Schools and similar.
c) Law Enforcement and Emergency Preparedness.
d) Industrial Buildings.
Increasing the degree of biofuel in the amount of biodiesel used in the municipal bus fleet. The aim of the
measure is to increase the level of biofuel being used in the buses where that is possible, along with
replacing the fleet with buses with EEV rating prepared for a high level biodiesel blends. By 2020,
there are expected to be 50% of the (76 buses) B100 fleet and the other 50% of the B12 buses.
On the other hand, the introduction of EEV (Enhanced Environmental-Friendly Vehicles) rated vehicles is a
stricter standard in terms of the specific masses of hydrocarbons (HC) and fumes compared to the legislation
currently in force for new vehicles (EURO 5), and even though it does not mean cutting GHG
emissions, it should be stressed that it is progress as regards improving air quality, something that is very positive
in a city such as Bilbao with high traffic density.
