Investment

The World of Microcredits This company has its headquarters in Zurich and Geneva, and branches in France, India, Kenya, Peru, Norway, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and Thailand. It specialises in microfinance in the following five areas: finance, agriculture, renewable energy, health and education. In agriculture, for example, it strengthens cooperatives and farming that operates sustainably, in finance it supports microfinance banks; in the field of energy, it finances domestic solar power systems for low earners; in health and education, it supports networking and improvements in the IT field. Its involvements are long-term and worldwide: for example in Central and South America …

Good news from the Higher School of Art and Design in Caldas da Rainha – IP Leiria  Uroboro* is a completed research project that has led to an everyday product which also has the objective of promoting environmental education in the home. It is an invention for cutting the disposal chain of biodegradable waste in urban areas and for finding individual solutions. Its inventor, Marco Balsinha (32), shows that is possible to avoid up to 30 percent of biodegradable waste with earthworm composting. Using his worm composter, the outcome of his final Master’s project at the Higher School of Art …

Green investment in Portugal Lightweight membrane optics is a pioneering discipline in the generation of solar energy. Who would imagine that high-tech devices for industrial use were being developed in a remote workshop in the Alentejo? In September 2014, the solar village of Tamera received 100,000 dollars from an Indian client to take this development a step further. The technique builds on the principle of the fixed-focus mirror, as used in Tamera for cooking with the Scheffler mirror. But the latter does not need to be high precision to reach a temperature of 200°. The developer Dr. Douglas Baillie says: …

The German company ABO Invest AG operates plants across Europe for the climate-friendly production of electricity and heat. The main focus is on wind power. At present, the company owns 62 wind energy plants in France (28), Germany (18), Ireland (14) and Finland (2).  The current generating capacity is 132 megawatts. Thanks to continual revenue, the value of the company is growing steadily. The goal is to increase its value by around seven percent a year. The transparent presentation of economic conditions is contributing to the fact that the share price is rising in a similar manner on the stock …

As you are reading this sentence, the first clients of the Coopérnico cooperative will be receiving their first bills for green energy. Present in the liberalised Portuguese energy market since 22nd June, this social economy company also provides anyone interested with the opportunity to invest in renewable energy. Find out how. It is one of the 56 organisations recognised by the Directorate-General of Energy as being able to trade in electricity, but it is not yet registered as a supplier with the ERSE (the Regulatory Body for Energy Services), whose website lists all the companies that can supply the market …

The prices for paper raw material from eucalyptus are falling. Last month, woodcutters in Portugal were working day after day to chop down as much eucalyptus as possible to be paid the old price of between 38 and 40 euros per tonne by Portucel/Soporcel. Now the prices are below 30 euros per tonne and there are far too many eucalyptus forests in the country. What will happen to them now? There is a lot of supply, but demand is low. This is good for the paper producer Portucel/Soporcel, but bad for the forest and land owners who are geared toward …

The developments and events thus far known about the collapse of BES and the Espírito Santo group, across various ramifications, are anything but reassuring. The entire range of situations that are coming into the public domain make it ever more pertinent to discover initiatives that take a different approach to banking activities and also in Portugal. To this end, ECO123 interviewed Tito Damião, Executive Director of ACAF – the Association of Self Financed Communities, which has engaged in a range of initiatives designed to foster the conditions for the emergence of Ethical Banking in Portugal. ECO123: Before we get into …

The definitions are often very personal and there are big differences between them. There are approaches that can confidently be referred to as greenwashing, and there are others that take purely social or ecological criteria into account. Whether the philosophy underlying an investment matches one’s own values is something that can only be ensured by asking specific questions about the conditions and background. This is also crucial from an economic point of view because it can currently be seen that many investment companies have taken advantage of the positive attitude of private investors, especially towards ecological investments. It is against …