Zaragoza (EFE).- The mayors of Zaragoza, Jorge Azcón, and Madrid, José Luis Martínez, have shared this Thursday in the Aragonese capital their experiences in terms of sustainability with which both cities want to be at the forefront of Europe in this matter as they have made it known to those attending the National Environmental Congress.
Azcón and Martínez Almeida have shared a discussion table entitled ‘How the 0 emissions target will change our cities’ in which both have discussed the different initiatives that they have carried out in their respective capitals and other projects that have yet to be executed.
Zaragoza and its revolution
Azcón has cited the “revolution” that Zaragoza has achieved in these four years in terms of mobility, in rehabilitation, which has meant intervening in 9,000 homes, or the project, he has said, “the most important in the history of the city”, as It is the creation of the so-called “Forest of the Zaragozans”, in one of whose plantations the Madrid mayor participated this winter.
Projects that were joined yesterday by the one that intends to transform all non-recyclable waste into green methanol and finally into hydrogen, which with an investment of 280 million euros wants to turn the Aragonese capital “into the first city in the world” that recycles “100% of the waste”. “We have done things well but we still have the capacity to implement many green projects”, Azcón has ruled.
For his part, the mayor of Madrid praised the ability of Jorge Azcón to make Zaragoza a benchmark in terms of sustainability policies and improvement of the livelihood of its citizens. He thanked CONAMA Local for the invitation to participate in this debate and also have “the opportunity” to expose the policies that are carried out from his town hall and that have allowed the capital of Spain “for the first time” to comply with the parameters of air quality and which he has described as “extraordinary news”.
Better quality of life for Madrid residents
A strategy, Martínez Almeida has said, that “revolves” on the sustainability of public transport, the generation of green infrastructures such as the 75-kilometre Metropolitan Forest that surrounds the capital or the adoption of other measures that have increased the quality of life of the people of Madrid, in which, as in Zaragoza, urban rehabilitation has also played an important role, he pointed out.
The mayor of Madrid has also recognized how “much” he has learned from Jorge Azcón, to whom he has turned, he has pointed out, whenever he has had “some doubt or problem”, and especially during the time of the pandemic. With him he shares projects such as the Bosque de los Zaragozanos, in his case with the metropolitan green belt, or solutions in the field of mobility and which, in his opinion, should “pivot” on public transport and on the renewal of the fleet of buses.
In this sense, he recalled that Madrid is the first European city in which “no diesel bus has circulated” since January 1 and that it maintains the commitment to achieve by 2027 that 0% of the bus fleet is electric .
These are commitments that, according to the mayor of Madrid, “demonstrate ambition for the future and be climate neutral cities”, convinced that it should be the big cities, which are the ones that consume 60% of the resources, that should “lead” the decarbonization since, otherwise, “it will be very difficult to achieve those objectives”, he concluded.