Regarded as the biggest Science and Technology Park in Portugal, Taguspark brings together entrepreneurship, research and learning in the same place, all of which is conveyed to its DNA. Ensuring that workers can undergo a “21st century experience” is the main focus of the management of this business complex. A combination of art, contemporary architecture and working conditions geared to well-being and quality is the formula used to achieve this. It should be pointed out that around16,000 people work at and use the park and 150 companies have set up shop there.
“Civicism is a differentiating factor and something we regard as extremely important in the daily lives of the people that frequent the park on a daily basis”, declares Eduardo Baptista Correia. The path to an increasingly civic park began to be paved three years ago: “Today, you no longer see cigarette butts and litter on the ground and badly parked cars”, explains the Taguspark CEO. This civic concern extends to the manner in which the waste generated by the park itself – cigarette butts, for example – is part of production processes, designed and implemented by the organisations based there.
Another area of activity focuses on the issue of dignity of labour, and innovative measures have also been implemented in this regard: All the employees who provide services to Taguspark that used to earn the minimum wage now take home a minimum of nine hundred euros a month. “As far as we're concerned, this is an absolutely essential part of civicism”, says Baptista Correia.
More recently, Taguspark decided to invest in “energy civism”, with the ultimate aim of rendering the premises more ecological and greener through the use of a solar power plant. “We are going ahead with an extremely robust and pioneering project in Portugal, involving the use of photovoltaic panels to enable us to become increasingly less dependent on the power grid and to reduce levels of pollution. We believe it is of the utmost strategic importance to be at the forefront of these issues”, underlines the Taguspark CEO.
Taguspark will now have a solar power plant with the capacity to produce more than 1 GWh of electricity per year. The project, developed in partnership with Galp's new solar self-consumption company, EI - Energia Independente, consists of the installation by the technology company LG of 1,500 solar panels in seven buildings in the park's Business Innovation and Technology Centre, with total installed power of over 700 kWp
It is estimated that 97% of the energy produced will be allocated to self-consumption at the Taguspark facilities, which will enable this business complex to reduce its dependence on the power grid by 23% and prevent the emission of 251 tons of CO2 per year.
“This project has a very special significance to EI, as it enables us to confirm that all the technology we are developing, which we call Eitech2perform, allows us not only to be more efficient and faster, but also shows us that it is equally prepared to deal with more complex and challenging solutions such as Taguspark”, explains the EI representative.
The EI project involves the installation of 1,500 solar panels
Eitech2perform is the company´s own technology, developed by EI, which combines a series of layers of information (registration, management, satellite images, socio-economic data, the characterisation of self-consumers and the calculation of profitability) which enables us to create the solution best suited to each client´s needs in an efficient manner.
“The Taguspark project is the confirmation that we are capable of meeting the requirements of the most demanding customers”, says Ignacio Madrid, the CEO of Energia Independente.