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At almost 7pm in Bilbao, the heat is still so strong that a group of tourists have huddled in the shadow cast by Maman’s sac of eggs. The nine-metre-tall spider sculpture stands in an exposed stretch of ground outside the Guggenheim Museum.

Elsewhere, the city offers plenty of shelter for its residents and visitors during this late June heatwave. Plane trees make a cool tunnel of the Gran Vía, where screens announce the time and temperature; 25°C at 9pm stops me in my tracks. 

There are 131 ‘climate shelters’ – air-conditioned buildings and green spaces where people can keep cool – publicised this year by an outreach team holding white parasols in addition to the usual channels. Temporary fountains have been set up in the busiest areas of the city. 

I’m here to find out what goes on behind the scenes to make Bilbao and the Biscay province of the Basque Country an innovator in climate adaptation; a place that does things a little differently from the rest of Spain and Europe. 

From static to dynamic urban planning

Tecnalia, the largest applied research centre in Spain, resides in a leafy science park above ‘el bocho’ (the hole) as Bilbao is known, because of its position in the dip of the mountains. 

Within this sleek R&D hub, the Energy, Climate and Urban Transition unit is busy applying advanced technology to some of the knottiest nodes in climate action.

Patricia Molina oversees the City, Territory and Environment pillar within this unit. An urban planner by training, her practice has evolved with technological breakthroughs – bridging economic, social and other silos, and knitting together different scales to produce a dynamic analysis of the city. 

“If you can see almost life on one hand and on the other hand you can make scenarios and anticipate those scenarios and take the measures in advance, I think this is going to completely change the urban planning system,” she says. 

Her team can map cities in extraordinary detail. Including, for example, whether an apartment block has an elevator or air conditioning.  Combined with demographic stats, it helps them to see where residents are most vulnerable during extreme heat. 

Given Bilbao’s vulnerability to river flooding, they have also mapped the city’s sewage system and road network, including the number of vehicles and access to alternative routes if a flood strikes.

And with digital twins – virtual replicas of cities – they can test the efficacy of nature-based solutions, even down to which tree species will have the fastest growth rate under climate change.

Climate proofing, explains Efren Feliu Torres, head of the climate change adaptation programme, is a crucial concept within their modelling. It means taking into account the fact that the climate is dynamic and will alter the outcome of adaptation measures.

“The intention is improving decision-making. That is the ultimate objective,” he says. Tecnalia’s analysis feeds into mid- to long-term planning for authorities, helping them to see where investment is most needed and impactful. 

“When we show the work we are doing to some municipalities in the south of Spain, they are just amazed because apparently we don’t have such a huge problem with heat here, but we are already planning for it,” says Molina. 

A unique ecosystem of public and private partnerships

Tecnalia is roughly half-and-half supported by private and public funding – a collaborative effort fostered by the regional government. 

Another embodiment of this approach is the B Accelerator Tower (BAT), a public-private centre for entrepreneurship housed in Bilbao’s second-tallest building. The tallest is the Iberdrola Tower, the headquarters of the Spanish energy company, which dominates the skyline. 

BAT’s 200 members include corporate powerhouses like Iberdrola and Triodos Bank, the Basque region’s main institutions, and dozens of start-ups. Global consulting firm PwC operates as a ‘matchmaker’ here, and says it has made 600 matches between entities big and small.  

One such start-up is Woza Labs, which is developing deep-tech foundations to solve climate and sustainability challenges. The Bilbao-headquartered company has partnered with Iberdrola to smarten its grid management, identifying where power lines are most at risk in the short term, and where new ones should be built to maximise their resilience. 

It does this by integrating disparate datasets – including geospatial intelligence and data from the energy company about its facilities and past incidents – into one predictive platform.  

“What we’re seeing today is that companies, governments, public institutions, they are not ready for measuring climate […] their systems are not ready to work in a more volatile environment,” says CEO and co-founder Sebastián Priolo. With climate change causing fiercer storms, heatwaves and wildfires, “that volatility needs to be input in the systems.”

One of the things that wooed Woza’s founders to Bilbao from London is what Priolo calls “the asymmetry between digitalisation and industry.” With a past rooted in heavy industry and an ongoing industrial presence, it’s a seller’s market for companies offering digital services. 

The Bizkaian government has created a supportive environment for start-ups, he adds. 

Exercising its tax autonomy, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia has incentives to encourage innovation and decarbonisation. The corporate tax deduction for investments in clean technologies has recently been increased to 35 per cent, for example. 

“We want to be there among the main European countries concerning innovation,” Ainara Basurko Urkiri, deputy of economic promotion in the Bizkaia Government, tells Euronews Green. “We need public and private partnerships,” she emphasises. “If we go hand-in-hand together, we will move forward faster.”

Chasing greener horizons at Bilbao Port

Bilbao’s changing narrative is nowhere better illustrated than at its port, Spain’s fourth busiest.

This, says Andima Ormaetxe, director of operations, commercial, logistics and strategy, is the port of the Atlantic. It is a gateway for the rest of Europe and America, and its history is also that of Bilbao, which was granted city status and control of maritime traffic entering its estuary in 1300.

Iron ore had long been mined from the surrounding hills, furnishing the armouries of Spanish kings. But extraction became big business in the nineteenth century, spearheaded by British industrialists. 

The meandering Nervión River was straightened en route to the Old Town docks (15 km upstream), which were eventually abandoned altogether as the superpuerto on the bay grew. The Guggenheim Museum was built on a derelict dock district.

Now, hemmed in by those hills, there is no more room for Bilbao Port to expand. “So our generation is the generation in which we have to make the port more effective and efficient with the space that we’ve got,” says Ormaetxe.

“It’s clear that decarbonisation is going to be a big opportunity,” he adds. The port has invested millions in electrifying its docks; a bank of onshore wind turbines, wave farms and solar panels are part of its plan to be self-sufficient and create an Onshore Power Supply (OPS).  

In the chicken and egg game of working with shipping companies – which say they cannot transition without the infrastructure – Bilbao Port is aiming to make green electricity the cheap option, and raise ambitions around Europe.

It is also collaborating with the industrial sites at its heels, affording them the space to develop green hydrogen, which is a major part of the region’s plans. Precisely because Biscay was a major cog in the industrial revolution, it is now busy building a greener future – working with what it’s got, to paraphrase Ormaetxe.

The author was a guest of the Bizkaia government in Bilbao.