João Teixeira, Executive Director and Owner of EULA IT, a German startup specialised in the development of Industry 4.0 and environmental solutions that launched the SmartPlanet platform.

João always said that “if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem”. That is why he created SmartPlanet. An open that offers everything needed to create environmental insights, integrate these insights into legacy applications, react to special events, present the results & trends in a powerful dashboard and make key insights available to the population in an intuitive and didactic way.

• What is the background and motivation behind SmartPlanet?

The environmental issue has always been important to me, but, like most people, I didn’t see a way to engage myself personally to contribute positively to projects and solutions to existing problems. In 2015 I co-founded a startup, EULA IT, specialized in developing solutions for the so-called Industry 4.0, and the environmental area seemed very distant from our day to day.

This began to change when we started receiving requests from various partners to leverage our expertise in sensors, IoT, and satellites to develop solutions for monitoring environmental projects. Besides the evident interest of the population and the media in the issue, characterized by protests and appalling news, we noticed that a huge number of resources were invested in numerous initiatives to mitigate this problem. However, the lack of transparency gives people the impression that very little is being done and does not allow one to differentiate serious from ghost projects, providing the explosive proliferation of socalled “greenwasching”. So, we decided that bringing our expertise in digitization in the context of Industry 4.0 to the environmental area would help good projects gain efficiency and transparency, and consequently make it easier to uncover bad actors, channeling resources for the good ones. Therefore, we founded SmartPlanet UG.

• What is the SmartPlanet Project?

The SmartPlanet project is coming to bring digitalization, efficiency, transparency, engagement, and new sources of revenue to activities that involve environmental and sustainability issues. The project is based on a double pillar: the SmartPlanet platform and the TerraBeat mobile app.

Two of the main objectives of the project are:

1. Support organizations to plan, execute and monitor the activities of environmental projects.
2. To provide transparency and accountability to the (global) population, allowing them to inform and
   collaborate with these environmental projects.

The platform allows governments, NGOs, researchers, and companies executing environmental projects to access data, algorithms, workflow models, and visual components for processing, monitoring, and calculating performance indicators for project management, and to share best practices, methods, and techniques.

A significant part of this project is the use of Wikidata and the Wikibase software suite to create a comprehensive, free, and collaborative environmental knowledge base to support planning and follow-up of environmental projects, and to bring environmental education and reliable project information to the world population via the TerraBeat mobile app.
The app also allows organizations to demonstrate to the world their commitment to the environmental cause and to provide transparency about their project, and also opens a new and innovative channel for the population to engage in various ways in the environmental and sustainability cause.

• How does it contribute to the environment?

At the core of the platform are tools to support the planning, execution, and monitoring of environmental projects, considerably increasing efficiency and transparency in the issuing of different environmental certificates (CO2 sequestration, environmental services, biodiversity, etc.). These can be environmental recompositing or restoration projects either through legal commitments such as forest replacement, or through projects aiming at carbon fixation (compensation of emissions by third parties, stock expansion with densification and/or environmental restoration), or other projects of a social nature, environmental preservation/protection, scenic beauty, biodiversity, or the most diverse and potential environmental services related.

The mobile app uses gamification strategies for greater engagement of the population in environmental education and causes. It also allowed the population to monitor the effective application of public resources in the mitigation of negative environmental impacts and the recovery of degraded areas, increasing the pressure on the various stakeholders to control the efficacy of environmental projects and to combat “greenwasching”.

• What was the main challenge regarding the development of the solution?

The biggest challenge was to create a business model that on the one hand provides the population with reliable, quality information about the environment and environmental projects at no cost, and yet is economically sustainable. Fortunately, there are several examples of digital platforms that use multi-sided business model to allow the most important audience, the global population, to enjoy the benefits for free.

The platform adopts the SaaS model to make its features available to companies involved in the execution of environmental projects and is open for third parties to generate revenue by contributing to its expansion. The mobile application enables organizations to use this channel to engage with the population in different ways.

• What inspires you?

“If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”This African proverb serves as a source of inspiration and motivation and guides our planning and actions.
Today we see so many protests and speeches with accusations and apocalyptic messages, but few actions to solve the problem. We want to stop being part of the problem by creating software that helps other organizations and people around the world to also be part of the solution.

• What stage is the project at and what are the next steps?

Together with our first client/partner we are carrying out the pilot projects foreseen in the “Joint Business Concept” (JBC) that was presented and approved by the LCBA program. This activity will give us subsidies for the final improvements to the platform.

We are also strengthening our ecosystem through strategic partnerships with European entities, such as Fraunhofer IIS and Wikimedia Deutschland, and Brazilian ones, such as SOBRADE and EMBRAPA.

We have also put online through our website an opinion poll to collect data for the design of the TerraBeat application, whose development will begin soon. So, I invite everyone to access our site www.smartplanetplatform.com and participate in the survey so that we can make our platform even better and together we can collaborate to solve the greatest challenge facing humanity today.

Terra Santta Energia is partnering with the Dutch technology provider Paques to transform the left-over waste from the production of ethanol (which is vignesse stillage) into biomethane and digestate for biofertilizers.

For this reason, Terra Santta aims to carry out a project for the conversion of waste from the sugar and ethanol production called vignesse that will be transformed into biogas, and into biomethane. In addition, what is left from that process will be turned into digestate.
The project is structured in 4 phases:

1. Waste out of the ethanol (Vignesse) pre-treatment
2. Conversion of the pre-treated vignesse into biogas
3. Removal of the sulfuric acid (H2S) from the biogas through the compression of biogas to obtain biomethane
4. Conversion of the biogas waste into digestate and fertilizer.

The European company Paques will provide the technological solution, implementation and management of the project.

Amanda Moraes, Graduated in Environmental Engineering and MBA in Corporate Sustainability, is currently working as Social-Environmental at Coordinator Acciona Energía Brazil. Amanda is specialised in environmental licensing and in environmental management. She is the responsible for the implementation of projects in Brazil aligned with company’s ESG strategies. #SheLeadsTheChange

• Which is ACCIONA Energía main area of activity?

ACCIONA Energía is the largest global energy operator working exclusively in the renewable energy sector, with no fossil legacy. The company has commercial operations in 20 countries on the five continents, and has been present in Brazil since 2021. It works exclusively in renewable energy, with activities in wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, hydro and biomass generation.

As a result of more than 20 years of experience in the renewable energy sector, the company offers reliable and efficient solutions based on the most advanced technologies, such as green hydrogen and solar floating plants.

The company also sells 100% renewable energy on the electricity markets and through bilateral contracts with a wide range of customers, with a special focus on companies that want to reduce their carbon footprint.

In 2021 we entered the market in Brazil, a priority country for our growth pipeline in the coming years.

• As socio-environmental coordinator, what is your main mission in the company?

My role is to translate the ESG strategies of the company for our projects in the country, being able to develop our projects with respect to the environment and the people around us and leaving a legacy beyond the generation of clean energy itself.

• Could you tell us more about your professional experience in environmental and socio-environmental management?

I am passionate about what I do, and I feel that wherever I have been, I have made a difference and come out different, always with positive exchanges and mutual growth.

The environmental and social area goes beyond a profession, it connects me to my truest lifestyle and ideals.

I try in practice to contribute to the world that I believe in and to the revolution that I feel inside of me.

• What other women have inspired you in your professional career?

I am the result of all the women I have crossed on my professional path and throughout the years I have lived, it is difficult to name names among so many, they all contributed to my growth and improvement, bringing me to where I am and pushing me to reach where I still want to go.

During my professional career I have also been encouraged to grow professionally, regardless of my gender. I recently joined ACCIONA Energía, where I have found several inspiring female colleagues.

William Bergh is a young Swedish entrepreneur who founded Cling Systems, the B2B platform that connects the battery ecosystem to ensure batteries are reused, repurposed and recycled. We had the pleasure to talk with him and learn more about his circular economy business project:

1.Could you tell us about your professional background and why you chose to focus your career on circular economy? 

The circular economy is something that has always fascinated and really gripped me. Cling Systems was born out of a desire to close the loop of lithium-ion battery systems and a few different experiences from my professional and personal life informed the decision to start it. I studied engineering at Lund University in Sweden and when I was there, together with some friends founded Lund Formula Student’s very first electric formula racing team and developed the first electric driveline. That provided a fascinating preview of the challenges of developing and running a project and team focused on mobility. As my studies were coming to a conclusion, I did my Masters Thesis at Northvolt mapping the logistics of EV batteries and lithium-ion battery recycling. Those experiences got me thinking about how to change the perception of waste. I also spend some of my studies within Environmental Science in Hawaii which really provided a window into how we need to respect the environment. 

2.How does Cling´s B2B market platform work? 

We work to match supply and demand and eliminate as much friction as possible in the trade. This means assembling and structuring loads of battery data. Once a trade is established, we move on to managing compliant shipping, the transfer of liability, and safe payments. The regulations point is important as the supply chain is very extensive, given where battery materials are dug up, where they are refined, where they are manufactured in gigafactories – these often are on different continents so the industry is a global one. We have to stay nimble so who knows how it will look in 12 months’ time as the sector moves so quickly. 

3.Who can participate? 

There are so many players in the industry and it is constantly shifting, but at the moment we view the sell side as companies such as OEMs, fleet owners, insurance providers, diagnostic providers, repair workshops, and car dismantlers. The buy side is remanufacturers, repurporsers and recyclers. Within those groups, we assess and vet those looking to use our platform so that the buyers are professional players and trustworthy. We spend a lot of time building up relationships with other industry players and that is very important for us.  

4.How does your company contribute to the environment? 

A sustainable society is dependent on sustainable batteries. Sustainable batteries are dependent on circularity. Cling enables circularity. Enabling reuse, repurposing and recycling of EV batteries means that material that makes up new batteries does not need to be dug out the ground, often at considerable cost to the environment. Our platform will mean emissions are avoided and the more batteries we can exchange, the more we can contribute towards batteries being seen less as a cost or even waste, and more as an asset. By digitizing this waste, we can make it an accessible and valuable resource. 

5.Which was the main challenge you faced to launch your business project? 

Like any startup, getting funding for the business was a crucial requirement and we completed our seed fundraise of 2.3m USD led by Trucks VC and First Venture, as well as angel investors. Fundraising involves many parallel conversations and takes a lot longer than you think it will so that was a big challenge that we needed to complete. The investors are very supportive and have really helped us accelerate the vision we have for the company.  

6.Do you have any young talent that inspired your career? 

Many. There are incredible people everywhere that has inspired me – in my university classes, high school friends, and of course online and in newspapers. I think peer-inspiration often is overlooked. Look around, who do you see that inspires and motivates you? 

 #EuropeanYearofYouth #LCBA