Gorona del Viento El Hierro, the company that owns the El Hierro Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station, continues its awareness-raising efforts, focusing particularly on the role of environmental education among the island’s young people.
These efforts were highlighted today by the company’s chief executive Santiago González, as he met students from the Educación Secundaria del IES Garoé [Garoé Secondary School], Valverde, on their visit to the Power Station’s Upper Reservoir.
Mr González reminded the students that Gorona del Viento is always prepared to work in partnership to support their training. The proof of this can be seen during the current school year when the Power Station has been a key participant in projects in various branches of the sciences. This is happening more and more frequently, both within the Canary Islands and abroad, and at all levels of education.
“The continuing major health crisis has disrupted our normal relationship with the island’s population, as visits have been restricted — and were even stopped completely for a long period,” the chief executive officer stated. He continued, “but this crisis has also caused us to seriously consider that a change of model is vital for social and economic recovery, and that the recovery involves the green transition towards a green economic model that is being led by El Hierro”.
Mr González took the opportunity to thank the island’s education authorities for their active participation in awareness-raising programmes in relation to the Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station. “This helps us, not only to inform the population about the system for generating energy from renewable sources, and its benefits for the islanders, but it also helps us to deepen people’s appreciation of the need to save energy and water, as well as other issues underpinning respect for the environment,” he added.
Gorona del Viento’s Master Plan
In the last few years, the Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station, which has been in operation for less than a decade, has been close to generating half of the island’s energy from renewable sources, while renewable sources accounted for 17.5% of annual energy generation across the Canary Islands as a whole during 2020.
These figures show that the technological advances implemented on El Hierro are responsible for the Island’s leading position in terms of clean energy generation. “This is a pioneering project which is engaged in a continuous optimisation process to enable us to adapt to the realities of climate change, of demand for electricity, of the requirement for mechanisation, etc. However, that must not detract from efforts to introduce new energy sources that will enable us to achieve the sought-after zero carbon footprint in the production of electricity and water,” explained Santiago González.
“As we pursue this goal, we need to focus not only on the methods of energy generation, but also on the challenging task of changing both consumption patterns and ways of supplying homes, businesses, industries, organisations, etc. The Master Plan recently approved by Gorona del Viento sets out the lines of work that the company is engaged in, and which it must pursue in both the short and medium term.”
