Climate change is the defining environmental problem of our time. Global warming, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, has moved the argument out of the conference hall and into something far more ordinary: how we build, heat and cool the houses we live in.
Every sector has produced lower-impact alternatives, and construction is no exception. Sustainable architecture (arquitectura sostenible) rests on techniques and materials chosen for energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact. It also happens to be the cheaper way to live: a well-designed house uses less electricity and less gas, month after month. On the Costa del Sol it is usually the August cooling bill, not the January heating bill, that catches new owners out.
What sustainable architecture actually involves
Sustainable design means getting more out of the natural resources on the plot, and out of the building systems themselves, so that the finished house does less environmental damage. In practice it comes down to a handful of decisions taken early, most of them before anyone draws a floor plan. The main ones are these:
- Weighing one material against another, favouring those that are easily recycled and carry low embodied energy.
- Choosing where the building sits: as far as possible from sources of pollution, and with the natural ecosystem of the area taken into account rather than flattened.
- Cutting consumption from polluting, energy-hungry sources — cooling, heating, lighting and the appliances that go with them.
- Thermal insulation that holds the internal temperature steady, so the people living there can leave the heating and the air conditioning off for most of the year.
Little of this is optional, in any case. Spain’s building code sets minimum energy performance for new homes and for major refurbishments (CTE DB-HE), and the finished house is graded on an energy certificate (certificado de eficiencia energética) that any future buyer or tenant will see. The difference between meeting the minimum and designing properly is what turns up on the bill.
Energy savings start with the electricity contract
There is little point in building efficiently and then signing an electricity tariff that hands the savings straight back. Comparing what is on the market is straightforward enough. Getting the supply connected in the first place — dar de alta la luz — is the part that tends to defeat people who have just arrived.
Two things are worth knowing before you start. The first is that the connection charge is the same whoever you sign with: the fees for setting up a supply with Endesa are identical to Iberdrola’s, because they are set by the Spanish government and not by the company. The second is that Spain splits the business in two. The distributor (distribuidora) owns the cables, is fixed by the area you live in and is not something you choose. The supplier (comercializadora) is the one that bills you, and you can change it whenever you like. Getting power into a new house means going through the distributor for your zone; if you do not know which one that is, call any supplier — Endesa or another — and they will handle it for you.
Design first, insulation and materials second, tariff last. Get the first two right and the third matters less. It is not a heroic contribution to the future of the planet, but it is a real one, and it shows up on the bill every month.
If you are building or refurbishing on the Costa del Sol, these decisions are cheap at design stage and expensive on site. We are based in Torremolinos and work across Málaga; raising the energy question before the drawings are fixed is usually worth the half hour it takes.
