POWER OF THE SUN

The Which Way blog is back in commission after being outside a WIFI zone the past several days. We arrived in Sevilla today, which we quickly discovered is sweat-drippin HOT.  The summer climate here is similar to Austin's. 110˚F today. Ugh.

Notwithstanding the heat, we will be testing out the streets, bike routes, and parks here over the next week. I hope to post some blogs here on how Austin and Seville compare with their child-friendly orientation. A great story ran on KUT a couple of days ago on a similar topic: whether Austin's downtown is poised to become more family-friendly.

One thing that makes a huge difference to a downtown being family-friendly is shade from the sun, especially in this heat. Hot streets means hot children and melt-downs trying to get anywhere. The best streets are those with shade cover, whether natural or man-made, although here's to more trees.

On the topic of the sun, an interesting tidbit about Spain is that it is home to the world's first commercial solar power tower, located just outside of Seville. The tower, which was constructed in 2007, is part of a series of solar power generation plants to be constructed in the area utilizing the latest technology. You can read more about it here.  Spain has been a worldwide pioneer in green energy (in 2010, 18% of the country's power was from wind and solar), which was evident in all of our drives across Spain, where we saw field after field of wind towers and solar panels. However, the subsidy programs used to help fund the power have been very controversial here, especially with the country's economic woes, leading the Spanish government to recently halt the subsidy programs.

One of the many wind power fields we passed on our drives through Spain.