MWCC celebrates the entry into force of Law 7/2021 on Climate Change and Energy Transition

On the 22nd, Law 7/2021, of May 20, on Climate Change and Energy Transition came into force. Madrid Subterra, a collaborating entity of MWCC, made a series of amendments, and thanks to them, the Law recognizes, for the first time in Spain, that urban subsoil infrastructures are a source of renewable energy. This milestone means that infrastructures such as those of Metro de Madrid, Madrid Calle 30 and Canal de Isabel II, in addition to the essential service they provide to the city, will be recognized with a new added value as renewable energy sources.

With this, it is consolidated and promoted that the residual energies generated by said infrastructures are renewable energies that must be used to help meet urban needs for clean and distributed energy. Specifically, the Law contemplates two types of use of the energy potential of urban infrastructures:

• The use of the flow of the urban supply and sanitation systems for electricity generation in order to advance in new technological developments in the field of renewable energies and contribute to the achievement of the objectives established in the law (article 7.3).
• The use of residual energy generated in the infrastructures for its own supply and that of surface buildings (article 21.1.d).

Along with the recognition of these new renewable energy sources, the Law introduces another very relevant novelty for future projects to promote them. It regulates that the dispersion into the atmosphere of the residual energies generated in urban infrastructures and their use as one of the objectives of territorial and urban planning and management, as well as in interventions in the urban environment, in buildings and in transport infrastructure.

With this endorsement by the Law of the role that infrastructures must play as renewable energy sources, a new energy field is consolidated that will make it possible to take advantage of an own resource until now ignored and infrastructures are endowed with added value, opening a new horizon for new projects that generate investment, innovation and employment.