A graveyard in Spain has become an unlikely front in the fight against global warming, with hundreds of black panels placed on top of mausoleums providing year-round power for homes.

The 462 panels produce 124,374 kilowatts of electricity, enough to supply 60 homes for a year in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, near Barcelona. The exorbitant price of land in the densely populated satellite city inspired a solar energy company to propose using one of the last remaining available plots of land - the cemetery.

Conste-Live Energy and the local council spent three years persuading relatives of those interred and near-by residents that the unusual proposal would benefit the living without demeaning the dead. “The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors is to generate clean energy for new generations,” Esteve Serret, a company director, said.

The panels cost €720,000 (£612,500) to install and each year will keep about 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Mr Serret said.

“This is not much, but it will do something to help combat global warming,” said Bartomeu Muñoz, the Mayor of Santa Coloma. The glinting blue-grey panels are fixed on top of mausoleums, which in Spain hold five layers of coffins.

The panels, which face south to soak up maximum sunshine, were turned on last week after three years of planning. Santa Coloma is so densely populated that all 124,000 inhabitants live within a 4sq km area. Putting solar panels on coffins was a tough sell, said Antoni Fogué, a city councillor. “Let’s say we heard things like, ‘They’re crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect’,” he said.

City hall and cemetery officials waged a public awareness campaign to explain the worthiness of the project and the painstaking care with which it would be carried out.

Eventually they won over doubters, Mr Fogué said. The panels were erected at a low angle to be as unobtrusive as possible. “There has not been any problem because people who go to the cemetery see nothing has changed,” Mr Fogué said. “This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased.”

The cemetery holds the remains of 57,000 people. The solar panels cover less than 5 per cent of the total area. Community leaders hope to erect more panels and triple output. Santa Coloma has four solar parks, but the cemetery is the biggest and the first to attach panels to graves.

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