Now even the dead join the fight against climate change…

Published on Sunday 23 November 2008 20:56

SOLAR panels have been mounted on Spanish mausoleums as one town joins the fight against climate change.

Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a working-class enclave outside Barcelona, has transformed a place of perpetual rest into one buzzing with renewable energy.

Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa Coloma that the graveyard was the only viable spot to accommodate the town's solar energy ambitions.

The 462 panels produce power equivalent to the yearly use by 60 homes. It flows into the local energy grid for general consumption.

Esteve Serret, the director of Conste-Live Energy, which runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma and also works in renewable energy, said: "The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations."

Row after row of gleaming blue-grey panels rest on mausoleums holding up five layers of coffins, many of them marked with bouquets. The south-facing panels started soaking up the sunshine last Wednesday, in the culmination of a project that began three years ago.

Antoni Fogue, a city council member who was a driving force behind the plan, admitted that at first the idea was tough to sell to people. He said: "We heard things like, 'They're crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect!'"

But town hall and cemetery officials ran a public-awareness campaign to explain the worthiness of the project. The panels are at a low angle so as to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Mr Fogue said: "There has not been any problem whatsoever because people who go to the cemetery see that nothing has changed. This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased."

The concept emerged as a way to help a town that wants solar energy but is densely built-up – Santa Coloma's population of 124,000 is crammed into just one and a half square miles.

The cemetery holds the remains of about 57,000 people and the solar panels cover less than 5 per cent of the total surface area. They are expected to keep about 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Community leaders say they hope to erect more panels and triple the electricity output.

Santa Coloma has four other solar parks located on top of buildings. Cemeteries elsewhere in Spain have mounted solar panels on the roofs of their office buildings, but this is thought to be the first time they have been erected over graves.