As a researcher working on the governance of energy transitions in 2016, I was fascinated by the relatively slow growth of solar energy in Portugal despite the amazing potential. I crafted a research project to explore this with a focus on accountability relations, and successfully competed for a position at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation in Norway, where …
Read More »
Individual responsibility in the fight against climate change will play an increasingly important role in the future. Do consumers avoid waste at its source, i.e. when shopping? Do they produce or purchase electricity from renewable sources? Do they travel on holiday by train, by air or by plane, or do they stay at home? One example: a two-week hiking trip …
Read More »
In the current times, we have various energy concerns and not always coinciding. On the one hand, we want to save energy and not always for ecological reasons – the cost of utility bills also carries its own weight. Furthermore, we access an ever larger number of consumer devices without which we would seemingly otherwise not exist: computers, machines for …
Read More »
To present the project for creating, developing and producing the eco-efficient window (EEW), ECO123 interviewed its creator, architect Miguel Veríssimo. ECO 123 – What led you to design this window? Miguel Veríssimo – The EEW is a project dating from 2005/07. It arose from a practical need: a lack of eco-efficient building solutions on the market that could be …
Read More »
There are still people who don’t ride bikes because Portugal is not a “cyclable” country. But Rui Araújo, a Portuguese researcher from the University of Minho, decided to solve the problem: he made a prototype of a kit that can turn “normal” bicycles into electric bicycles. Costing €500, this device can be fitted to all bicycles, providing a range of …
Read More »
ECO123 spoke to the inventor of a completely new method of producing recycled paper, the biologist Dr. Philipp Althöfer (47). He studied natural sciences at the universities of Düsseldorf, Bonn and Cologne. The topic for his diploma thesis was: Biotechnical treatment of process-water using the example of a paper factory processing scrap paper in a large city. And his 2001 …
Read More »
Innovation and investment are the spices in our economic soup. You will need the following ingredients: 38,887 daily returns of the tabloid Correio da Manhã, 27,804 copies of the weekly Sábado, 17,824 unsold copies of Expresso, 12,547 copies of Público and 16,118 unsold copies of the Diário de Notícias, 23,339 copies of the daily Jornal de Notícias, 16,050 returns of …
Read More »
Styropor (Styrofoam) was invented by Fritz Rudolf Stastny. He was born in the Czech city of Brno on 4th March 1908 and died on 25th May 1985 in Ludwigshafen in Germany. It was more by chance than anything else that he invented this material, which nowadays plagues us right down to the foundations of our houses and presumably on to …
Read More »
Specialist in the economics of happiness 33-year-old Gabriel Leite Mota is the first Portuguese person to hold a doctorate in the Economics of Happiness. The title was awarded to him in 2010 by the Faculty of Economics of Porto (FEP), the institution where got his first degree in 2002. He teaches Economics, Politics and Happiness at ISPA – the Higher …
Read More »
from Dr. Eusébio Conceição Every year, a kindergarten in Olhão used to be ravaged by flu and colds. Today, the children are healthier and do their activities in airier rooms with improved air quality. It doesn’t involve any magic, improvisation or divine intervention; but is rather the fruit of a scientific study and the application of such simple measures as …
Read More »
Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
