Environment Minister challenges scientists

The Minister of the Environment has launched the challenge for scientists to participate in the transition to the circular economy by discovering new solutions for the use of materials or energy storage.

"What we want and what we propose to science, to those who discover it, is even a different model, a model that will give us the well-being we have today when we are 10 billion inhabitants on Earth," said João Matos Fernandes.

Portugal set the goal of being carbon-neutral by 2050, but "there is not yet enough knowledge to implement it," the Environment Minister said.

"To have effective trajectories that allow many sectors of the economy and society to reduce their emissions there are still things to discover, to invent at the level of processes, materials, ways of storing energy, and this was the challenge that I came to launch to scientists" he said.

Meeting the defined policy goals, such as reducing the use of raw materials or the principles of circular economy and the low-carbon economy, while ensuring the creation of jobs and well-being, "is very much in the hands of science and technology”, he added.

"Much more than repairing the old models, [it] is about building a new solution and, from there, proving that the previous one was obsolete," said João Matos Fernandes.

Source: Diário de Notícias