Case Study (.pdf 108 KB)

Summary

Mira Sintra is a district located in the municipality of Sintra. It started as a social housing quarter and developed into a district in 2001. In 2007, the Municipal Energy Agency of Sintra (AMES) designed a project in cooperation with Junta de Freguesia de Mira Sintra (a local authority), the Entrepreneurial Association of Sintra (AESintra), Ecoprogresso (a private company working in the CO2 market) and SelfEnergy (an ESCO) that aims to turn this district into a sustainable community. This project has four main elements: energy efficiency (distribution of CFL and energy efficient appliances across the population), construction (refurbishment of buildings, mainly insulation), renewable energies (photovoltaic solar energy), and an awareness raising campaign (target group: inhabitants of the district).

The financing of the project follows the ESCO model, with central administration support and sponsorship from private companies.

Results

Results from the pilot project:

The awareness raising campaign reached around 40% of the population, but if we consider the indirect knowledge (the families that attended the workshop informed other families) we reached around 90% of the population.

At this point, all the objectives of the pilot project have been reached, and the results are in line with our expectations. The next step of the project, the refurbishment of buildings, will be crucial to transform this pilot project into a global one (the aim is to address all the buildings in the district).

Lessons learned and replicability

This pilot project was designed to be replicated in the other districts of Sintra, in other districts in Portugal, and, with a few adjustments, in any other European country.

The involvement of private companies, local authorities and AMES was a huge success and should be seen as an example for future projects of this kind.

As previously stated, the main problem we encountered was the suspicion of the inhabitants in the beginning of the project and attracting funding from investors, which we overcame with the participation of all the partners in the project.

Due to a lack of suitable references for developing a project of this kind, some mistakes were made in the early stages. For instance, to get the support of the general population, ideally a local “leader” should have been involved in the development of the project. Another important aspect is to involve each family in the actions that will be done in their building, taking into account their opinions and contributions. In the awareness raising campaign, the door-to-door activities achieved much better results than the workshops.