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InovEnergy - Eficiência Energética no Sector Agro-Industrial


Project Type: Nacional / Público
Financial Program: QREN-SIAC
Global Funding Value: 1826266.37 €
IPB Funding Value: 88025.41 €; Research Project
Principal Investigator: Manuel Joaquim Sabença Feliciano
Start: 2011-09-01
End: 2014-08-31
Description: Energy is a factor of utmost importance to the economy of countries and the welfare of their citizens. Its relevance for the economic, social and environmental issues also makes energy a key factor for the development of a more sustainable world. Energy issues are particularly complex, due to the need of achieving balance between potentially conflicting factors such as economic competitiveness, consumer habits and comfort demands, people and goods mobility, land use planning, preservation and enhancement of environmental resources, or even the geopolitics autonomy. Since the mid-1970s and on a global scale, the strategic importance of energy issues has become increasingly evident and has prompted the need for a new paradigm of development. However, despite progress in promoting more sustainable energy policies, it has been witnessed a global increasing trend in energy consumption, in recent years. This trend has been largely driven by the rapid development of emerging economies and It is likely that continues in the coming years. A similar situation was also observed in Portugal until 2005, characterised by a significant increasing in energy intensity (ratio between GDP and energy consumption/VAT) when compared to the European Union average. Despite this trend is being reversed in last five years, the development of more ambitious and dynamic efforts in promoting energy efficiency still remains a priority in all sectors of society and in particular in sectors of economy with a high energy consumption such as the industry and transportation sectors. The project INOVENERGY - energy efficiency in agro-industrial sector â€“ intends precisely to identify the current profiles of energy consumption in agro-food industries with cooling systems and to promote and develop actions able to contribute to an effective improvement of the energy efficiency and, consequently, to an increase in the competitiveness of the sector. The InovEnergy project focuses on the identified priority agro-food industries for implementing the Strategy and the Action Plan of the Agro-Industrial Cluster of the Central Region of Portugal, in particular the Meat, Dairy, Vegetables and Fruits, Wine, Fish and Distribution sectors. The project will be developed by a consortium of eight partners (IPCB - coordinator, IPVC, IPP, IPB, UBI, ADAI, Animaforum and ISQ).