Iberdrola España inaugurates a pioneering innovation and training centre in Castilla y León

• The President of the Regional Government of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, and the CEO of Iberdrola España, Mario Ruiz-Tagle, have officially kicked off the state-of-the-art facilities located in the Zamora town of Muelas del Pan. 
• More than 800 people will receive training in its classrooms annually, contributing to the sustainable economic revitalisation of the area.
• It represents the company's commitment to attracting talent and includes various initiatives and programmes linked to professional development and innovation.

The President of the Regional Government of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, and the CEO of Iberdrola España, Mario Ruiz-Tagle, this morning inaugurated a pioneering innovation and training centre in Castilla y León in the Zamora town of Muelas del Pan.

They have thus officially kicked off a state-of-the-art facility where more than 800 people will receive training in its classrooms every year, contributing to the sustainable economic revitalisation of the area.

This new centre represents the company's commitment to attracting talent, technology, R&D and collaboration with technology centres as levers to lead the energy transition, the green recovery of the economy and the employment and employability of young people and senior professionals in sectors of the future

The CEO of Iberdrola España, Mario Ruiz-Tagle, pointed out that if the Ricobayo power plant, when it was commissioned, generated the light that illuminated homes throughout Spain, "the Ricobayo Campus that we have the pleasure of inaugurating today aims to illuminate the talent of the future".

"Technology and innovation are transforming the world at breakneck speed, providing renewable energy-rich areas with opportunities to host new industries linked to the energy and digital transformations. Examples of this are: the manufacture of renewable supplies and their recycling, electric vehicles, green hydrogen or data processing centres, which will need young and senior talent, at the forefront and trained in these trends", said Ruiz-Tagle.

The CEO of Iberdrola España also stressed that "this campus includes an innovative and open space for skills training, hydraulic models and even a virtual reality simulator. This important milestone represents the commitment of the private sector and the administration to the growth and development of rural areas in Spain, an open door to a future of opportunities for the community".

During the visit to the training centre, the regional president, accompanied by the Regional Minister of Economy and Finance, Carlos Fernández Carriedo, the President of Zamora Provincial Council, Javier Faúndez, and the Mayor of Muelas del Pan, Luis Alberto Miguel, learned first-hand about Iberdrola España's commitment to the European Re-skilling 4 Employment programme, an initiative of the European Roundtable of Industry (ERT), co-led by the company, with the aim of providing training and education in new skills for people at risk of losing their jobs due to the impact of the digital divide. The project aims to promote between 2.5 and 5 million jobs in Europe and between half a million and a million in Spain by 2030 among groups such as the long-term unemployed, young people and the over-45s.

It is worth mentioning the obligatory stop at the 'hydraulics laboratory', which was a study and research centre for the company when it faced its great energy challenge in the Duero system and in other scenarios such as the Sil. It maintains the reduced models of the most representative dams, which provide a precise explanation of the power and impact of the fiery floods of water that flow through the rivers, as well as the way to evacuate the surplus water so as not to compromise the safety of the dams and avoid the deterioration of the riverbeds into which millions of litres per second flow all at once.

In addition, various innovative projects were presented in the field of new energy technologies - wind and smart grids - with investments of more than 2,000 million euros in R&D in the last decade, making Iberdrola España the world's leading private energy company in terms of investment in innovation.

Many of the 55 hours of training that each Iberdrola España employee receives per year will be provided in these classrooms and workshops. The company also carries out numerous initiatives in collaboration with universities, such as the University of Salamanca, Pontificia de Comillas, and Deusto University in the Basque Country; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States; the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom; the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico; and Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.

Iberdrola España, creating value for society

Iberdrola España's commitment to Castilla y León and, specifically, to Zamora, is part of the company's deep ties with this region, where it was founded more than 120 years ago and from where it has been promoting the energy transition towards renewable and competitive energies that promote the development of a sustainable and environmentally and socio-economically responsible society.

Looking to the future, Iberdrola España will continue to invest heavily in this region in order to continue offering its almost 130,000 customers in Zamora an increasingly better quality of service. To this end, it plans to invest 36 million euros in electricity networks in the province over the next four years, with a further 40 million euros to be allocated to the expansion of wind farms 4.7 million to hydroelectric infrastructures over the last two years and a recurring fiscal contribution of more than 13 million euros a year in provincial taxes.

The company has 17 facilities in the province of Zamora with an installed capacity of 976 MW, four wind infrastructures and 13 hydroelectric plants, a clean and flexible energy that creates jobs and is committed to training professionals in a booming sector that offers jobs to young people. In addition, together with the Rei Afonso Henriques Foundation, it trains young people from schools in Zamora on the risks of climate change.

Iberdrola España will reforest the Zamora towns of Muelas del Pan and San Cebrián de Castro, which have been the winning municipalities in Castilla y León in the initiative Bosque busca pueblo en el que crecer launched by the company. Hand in hand, they will be responsible for promoting the recovery of natural spaces through the conversion of burnt or wasteland into forests, the development of employment and of the territory.

The company also recently announced in the Zamora capital that it will invest in a pioneering large-scale aluminium recycling project of the company LatemAluminium, which will create 800 jobs, 300 of them direct, by 2026 in the provinces of León and Zamora.

In 2022, Iberdrola España generated an impact of close to 1.2 billion euros in the region - including investments, payments to suppliers, salaries and tax contributions - with more than 200 million euros of payments to 400 companies in Castile and Leon, employing close to 900 people directly and more than 8,000 indirectly.