Did you know… there’s a financial institution that’s banking on geothermal energy?

Located in Las Tablas, Madrid, Spain, the headquarters of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A.(BBVA), La Vela “The Sail”, is 93 m (~305 ft) high and has 19 floors. It resides in a 114,000 m² (~1,227,086 ft²) office and service building complex, which includes seven more three-floor buildings. It is also heated and cooled using geothermal energy.

The headquarters were built with the sustainability criteria necessary to be deemed LEED gold certified, which is the strictest sustainable construction standard. La Vela and the other buildings were built using low environmental impact materials and have remote energy consumption monitoring technologies.

There are multiple renewable energy systems being used throughout the complex. Along with solar and water collection/recycling systems, the buildings have also installed closed-loop geothermal systems. The installation of these systems curbs the complex’s energy consumption by 8.3% and carbon emissions by 7.6%.