• The installation will be carried out according to annual housing quotas and the intention is to eventually cover all the social housing stock located in over 20 neighbourhoods of Bilbao.
• Each entity will annually invest half the sum required to installing heating in the allocated quotas.
• Thanks to this agreement, Nortegas will speed up the process to install natural gas heating already being implemented by OAL Viviendas Municipales de Bilbao.
• Nortegas is thus reaffirming its commitment to the wellbeing of the communities where it operates.

Viviendas Municipales de Bilbao [Bilbao Social Housing] has signed an agreement with Nortegas, the second natural gas distributor nationwide. The company will thus work with Viviendas Municipales to progressively provide the social housing stock with natural gas heating. The work will be carried out as the housing units become empty between tenants and an average of 200 units will be fitted out per year. Each of the entities will pay half of the investment needed.

The agreement was signed by the Bilbao City Councillor for Housing and Chair of Viviendas Municipales de Bilbao, Jon Bilbao, and Javier Contreras, CEO of Nortegas, during a ceremony held at Bilbao City Hall. Both parties noted the advantages of natural gas over other fuels, as it is more economically efficient and means fewer harmful emissions to the environment. Furthermore, Nortegas has expressed its interest in exploring other future partnership avenues as part of Bilbao City Council’s energy strategy. These include addressing areas such as converting diesel boilers to natural gas, the development of natural gas for vehicles (NGv) and the digitalisation of the service by installing smart readers in the municipal housing stock.

The housing included in this initiative are located in over 20 different neighbourhoods of Bilbao.  The Otxarkoaga (952 housing units), Torre Madariaga (258) and Santutxu (211) neighbourhoods are some of the areas where there will be the greatest investment and which will be prioritised due to the high number of units to be fitted with natural gas heating.

This initiative comes under the Nortegas strategic plan and is one of its key corporate social responsibility goals: to strength partnerships with local councils and institutions in its sphere of influence, in order to co-finance access to natural gas for the most vulnerable population segments and drive natural gas as an environmentally-friend energy source and which is economically very competitive. In this spirit, Nortegas has recently entered into a similar agreement with Avilés City Council to convert 49 social housing units to natural gas.

The Bilbao City Councillor for Housing and Chair of Viviendas Municipales de Bilbao, Jon Bilbao, stressed that “it is an initiative that is part of our firm commitment to provide Bilbao’s social housing with the best levels of comfort possible, along with fostering measures to optimise energy efficiency in the city’s public housing stock”.

In turn, Javier Contreras, the Nortegas Managing Director, stressed: “we are very proud of having reached this agreement with Viviendas Municipales de Bilbao. We are strongly committed to the geographical areas where we operated and we feel it is our responsibility, particularly at this time, to improve the well-being of these communities, especially in the case of the more vulnerable population segments, by offering an economically efficient energy alternative that helps to decarbonise the economy”.