The HCB Living Lab is Practicing What it Preaches

Setting Sustainability Goals and Leading by Example

Earlier this month, The Beato Creative Hub ( HCB ) presented the HCB Living Lab to the public, an initiative that aims to develop new technologies and services geared towards promoting good practices in environmental sustainability, a central concern for StartUp Lisboa who spearheaded and manages the project. The Living Lab is expected to run for three years, ending in 2024.

In a statement to the press, Miguel Fontes, Executive Director of the IPBN partner Startup Lisboa and guest speaker earlier in May as part of our Hiring and Investing in Portugal series of webinars, said, “We want to transform the HCB into a smart campus…and contribute to the improvement of the project's environmental sustainability through the innovative operations that we are launching. Through this living laboratory, we also hope to motivate the city's business ecosystem to integrate sustainable solutions in the creation and development of their businesses, as well as inspire the creation of new living laboratories in other entrepreneurship ecosystems.”

The new laboratory will be the new home for project development in four main categories: Energy, Building, Mobility, and the Circular Economy & Environment, culminating in what the Hub calls a smart campus for large-scale testing of green initiatives within a real urban environment. The Hub has set itself up to achieve this goal in nine different ways:

1. The use of solar energy as a renewable energy source for the Hub

2. A LED outdoor lighting system that will use sensors to allow for reduced energy consumption

3. A rooftop urban agriculture area with a vegetable garden for research, and community involvement

4. Reduced public transport emissions with Beato Biobus, fueled by biodiesel made from used cooking oils 

5. A circular food system through a tool developed for material flows associated with the catering system to assess short-chain strategies

6. A CleanTech acceleration program to promote and support the creation of products and services dedicated to clean technologies

7. An intelligent i-Management platform that synthesizes KPI data for analysis and monitoring to power the HBC’s smart city strategy

8. A sensing and charging system implemented within poles equipped with occupancy and environmental sensors, sound systems, CCTV and soft mobility electric vehicle charging alongside a reference meteorological station and radiation sensors on some of the rooftops at the HCB

9. The HCB Data Laboratory that will serve as the nucleus of the CML Urban Data Laboratory (LxDataLab)

According to the HCB's technological partner Lisboa-E-Nova, "This initiative will make the HCB a large-scale demonstration space [whose] planned operations will benefit HCB entities and community, local, scientific and entrepreneurial communities, as well as inform local public policies."