Living Lab for low carbon wineries in Portugal: our first encounter

The Wines of Alentejo (a private institution dedicated to certifying, controlling and protecting the Alentejo wine production) hosted the first session of a Living Lab together with the PROSEU research team. Representatives of some of the most important wineries of the Alentejo region participated in the first of four co-creation sessions that will focus on accelerating a transition to a more sustainable wine production in the region, through a wider adoption of renewable energy production and self-consumption by local wine producers.

Citizens and companies have a central role in the mainstreaming of the production and self-consumption of renewable energy sources - which we call RES Prosumerism. However, they must deal with multiple socio-technical barriers and challenges. In the PROSEU Living Labs, we aim to work side by side with different societal actors to understand, in real life contexts, the needs and obstacles to achieving objectives associated with RES prosumerism.

In Portugal, the PROSEU project teams from Fciências.ID (Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon) and University of Porto (Engineering Faculty of the University of Oporto) are working with wine producers of the Alentejo region to co-learn and share our experience on RES systems in order to promote prosumerism in the sector. In the first of four co-creative sessions, the participants together with the research team, explored the opportunities, benefits and barriers associated with RES prosumerism from multiple perspectives (i.e. environmental, economic, socio-technical and legislative), and well as their visions about the adoption of these technologies in their wineries. By using participatory and interactive methods (i.e. World Café and construction bricks to stimulate individual and collective thinking), the participants exchanged their thoughts, demands and expectations regarding the current and future incentives and disincentives they may face to adopt these technologies in an important sector for the Portuguese economy.

From this first session, we conclude that the wine producers of the Alentejo region are fully aware of the impacts that climate change will have in the sector and the region, and envision a transition to a new energy model, more sustainable and holistic, that integrates environmental, technological and societal factors.

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For more information about the PROSEU Living labs.

Image copyright: Collective visions (FC ID) by "Esther Marín"