Whole Travel Blog

Telefonica, the largest company in Spain, is constructing a 12-building complex to bring 40,000 employees to one main campus in Madrid. The buildings are using a special type of glass to reflect the hot Spanish sun, and panels stick out from the building to act as sun visors. Each of the buildings is to be connected by a covered walkway that will be the world’s largest rooftop photovoltaic installation with 15,000 solar panels capable of producing 4 million kWh annually. Landscaping will be native vegetation which requires minimal water, and that amount of water will be provided by rooftop rainwater collectors.

Distrito C - Telefonica's New Madrid Headquarters

According to Reuters, Argentina will soon become the first country to require an environmental insurance, meaning that companies engaging in projects that are potentially harmful to the environment will have to purchase insurance to cover any such environmental damage.

Argentinean officials report that an estimated 35,000 companies will have to pay an annual policy costing between $36k to $15M.

Besides wondering if other countries will follow Argentina’s lead, an entirely different question to think about is whether companies will now build the cost of environmental damage into their budgets or whether they will consider their possibly detrimental footprint before taking a step.