Last Thursday, KEPLER Ingeniería y Ecogestión celebrated its 30th anniversary accompanied by our Excmo.
Ayuntamiento de Burgos, Universities and Technological Centres, clients, collaborators and friends.

The event took place at the Casa Palacio del Cordón in Burgos, an iconic place of history and entrepreneurship in 16th century Spain, which takes over from our celebration last April in another emblematic space at the
Nao Victoria Foundation.

The conference was inaugurated by Mr. Ángel Manzanedo, Deputy Mayor of Burgos City Council, whom we thank for his attendance and who underlined KEPLER’s ‘clearly scientific DNA, as reflected in the figure of its founder
Norbert Nägele’, as well as KEPLER’s role as ‘witness and also protagonist of the industrial, scientific and environmental development of our city and our country’.

The event continued with the intervention of Dr. Adelaida Sagarra Gamazo , Professor of American History at the University of Burgos, with her talk on “A company of kings, merchants and oceans. From Burgos to Spices via Seville”. Dr. Sagarra detailed the fundamental role played by the Casa Palacio del Cordón and families from Burgos, such as the Salamanca and López de Haro families, in promoting the great expeditions and discoveries of the 16th century, as well as the connection between Burgos, Seville and Barcelona.

The day concluded with a presentation by Mr. Norbert Nägele , Founding Partner and Managing Director of KEPLER and Conterol, which consisted of a ‘journey’ through the evolution of the Environmental and Renewable Energies sector in Spain over the last 30 years.

In his speech, he highlighted two issues. Firstly, his team, since, in the words of Mr. Norbert, ‘we have managed to attract a group of people with a unique human and professional talent’ and that ‘this talent has developed with us from the University to our current management positions’.

Secondly, he recalled the importance of ‘focusing on the truly important environmental challenges’ and of ‘making our industry more competitive and without environmental liabilities in order to guarantee its subsistence and competitiveness in the medium and long term in a highly globalised world’. In this sense, Mr. Norbert wanted to recall the relevance (i) of studying, analysing and researching the effects on the Environment and Human Health of the thousands of toxic and hazardous substances identified in the last decades, as well as (ii) of changing the scientific approach in our sector to stop ‘considering the effects of pollution in isolation and approach it from a holistic point of view’.

Finally, from KEPLER, we would like to give special thanks to Banco La Caixa for allowing us to celebrate our anniversary in such a special place as the Casa del Cordón, as well as to Romain Riff for moderating the meeting.