Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the city, the BABLE podcast, where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the city is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities we enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at BABLE Smartcities EU.
[00:00:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: So today we return with the SMCNetZero podcast series, our series looking at decarbonization in small and medium sized cities, created with our EU funded project SMCNetZero. So before we dive into the episode and I introduce you to our special guest, I wanted to let you know that SMCNe Zero has now launched a training program for small and medium sized cities, and it's free of cost as well. So for more information, find it in the show notes. And without further ado, let's move to our discussion around small and medium sized cities. And let's go to Portugal, which is a wonderful country, as you know, and to the seaside city of Cascais, which is not far from Lisbon. So I want to introduce you to João Dinis. He's the head of the climate action office at Cascais Ambiente, which is one of the four municipally owned companies which has a special focus on sustainability. So welcome, João.
[00:01:46] João Dinis: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here today, and thank you for this very kind invitation.
[00:01:51] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really happy to have you. I was just telling you before this as well, that I've been to Cascais, and I had a wonderful experience where I got to see dolphins in the ocean, and everyone started pointing, and it was really a really cool place to be. So I'm glad I got to experience your city a bit, and I'm very jealous that you live there.
[00:02:11] João Dinis: Well, you're always welcome.
[00:02:13] Tamlyn Shimizu: Are you originally from Cascais?
[00:02:15] João Dinis: Yes, I am. Actually, a few days back, we had a discussion here, and I'm a fifth generation citizen of Cascais here, and so I'm very happy to have been enjoying all my life the dolphin view, as you mentioned, the waves, the beach, also the mountain range, the protected landscape that we have here, but also the wonderful culture that we have. So not only on our night outings, our day partings as well, but also our closeness to Lisbon, which is really useful for traveling, but also for business, as you can imagine.
[00:02:53] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely.
So before we get into more of what your city is doing, also in regards to climate and all of that, I like to give the listeners a little bit more of a feeling of your city. And I always start off with a teaser question. And for you, I chose a fun one. So it is, if you had to describe the city using three emojis, which ones would you pick and why?
[00:03:21] João Dinis: Well, I would choose. That's a good question. That's a surprising one, actually. But it's wonderful. I can choose easily one which is the emoji of a wave, probably with a surfer, because we do have 30 coastline and we have 17 beaches to choose from. That's definitely one we would probably choose. The other one would be a tree emoji, because one third of our territory is protected landscape, and we do have a lot of urban green spaces that you can enjoy any time of the day and any time of the week and in the year, of course. So you can be close to biodiversity and you can be close to your friends in nature. And the last one, I would put the classic smiley emoji, because due to that, people are just happy to be here. You said it yourself. So everybody's happy to be here, especially in sunny days. And we are actually one of the sunniest municipalities in Portugal and in Europe, so no wonder everyone's smiling and happy and tanned. As.
[00:04:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: For emojis, like a sunma emoji and all of those ones to describe it, too. But, yeah, sounds good.
[00:04:40] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Tamlyn Shimizu: I'd also like to give our listeners a little background into you and who you are.
And can you give us some insight into how you got to this point today? What's your background? Tell us all, please.
[00:04:54] João Dinis: Okay. In a very summarized way. Basically, I don't just love the environment, I love the systemic nature of our environment. And that means that the way that our biodiversity interacts with our human nature, the way that our geology fosters our territorial occupation and all the economic and social dynamics that we have. This is extremely complex. And when I was growing up, I could easily see that our territorial development was not considering all the systemic approach. So it was just doing things that were basically based on regulations. Right. And we needed much more. We needed to understand this complexity. We needed to raise a bit of awareness about the opportunities that we could grasp if we were a bit more considerate of our living environment. And that's how my interest started. So I studied geography at the time, I furthered the studies in urban development as well. And then I went on to study a bit more about geographical information systems, because I needed to model, and I really like to model a bit as well, but also sustainable development, which at the time was not something that was still big in the scope of academics.
And then I immediately started to work on this subject. So I had the wonderful opportunity, and I'm very thankful for all the opportunities that I had to experiment, to bring new ideas, to learn a lot. I learn every.
So now I am currently managing the climate action department here in Cascais. And this is within the line of thinking, because climate action is actually the ultimate discipline in terms of complexity, where you have to make sure that you save, or at least promote your natural environment again with your economic development, but also your social and cultural structure. And that is crucial for us. If you are able to merge everything, you will have the sustainable development model here at local scale, which is, in my perspective, the good scale. That's where you can really make a difference.
Yeah, so very summarized. That's what I do right now, and that's where I came from.
[00:07:22] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really interesting background and also love your systemic, holistic approach to how you're looking at things. I want to dive into that also a bit more on how you're really looking at these different challenges. But first, I would love to know a bit more. And I think it helps the listeners to understand what is Cascais Ambiente, how does it work together with the council, with the municipal companies, what is the structure there?
[00:07:51] João Dinis: So Cascais Ambiente is a municipal owned company. That means that we are entrusted with a public service mission regarding the environmental sector here in the city of Peshkaj. And we were established to ensure that we were able to do the sectorial services, such as waste collection, urban cleaning, but also territorial management when it comes to the environment. And we kind of grew, we grew into new innovative approaches. For example, we promote biodiversity in our natural landscape. We promote the design and establishment of new urban green areas here in the city for everyone to use.
We also innovate and use smart city approach when it comes to the technology and our management approach on things. And finally on climate action, which is, as you well know, it's probably the biggest challenge that cities are facing now when it comes for both adaptation, but also for mitigation. So that means we also work on energy efficiency, decarbonization strategies, and finally, when it comes to local resilience. And we help everyone within the city and we work within the town hall to fulfill our mission. So it's quite challenging, but it's going well.
[00:09:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: Sounds like a challenge for sure. I'm just wondering, how does Cascais really leverage innovation and technology then, to enhance this kind of work on climate and sustainability? Can you give us maybe an example as well?
[00:09:33] João Dinis: Absolutely. I mean, technology is a very useful tool. It does bring out innovation, but it only is useful if you have a good governance model. So technology helps us to enhance and grasp the potential of human beings. So I would say that governance and technology work side by side when it comes to good examples of what we're doing. I would say, for example, we have our smart waste system, which is something that my colleagues at the waste collection are using. That helps us to better understand the collection effort needs when it comes to, for example, route planning, when it comes to optimizing our service, and to understand where the challenges are so we can tackle them swiftly and to the benefit of all the local community.
That's one of the examples. When it comes to governance, for example, what we're trying to do is to make sure that we have a good system where our citizens can be listened to and can take part of this change whenever we, let's use the term, operate like in an operation, a surgery. In our city of Cascais, we make sure that people are brought into the equation of the decision making. This is the co creation. And by co creating, we're making sure that we understand what are the needs of people. And by co creating, we help them to feel like they actually own the place themselves. So they become volunteers and they become active, let's say, owners of the space, taking good care of these spaces or facilities or projects that we are doing. So by merging both, what we're doing is that we are promoting transparency and we are promoting efficiency. And by promoting this, obviously, we are able to work better and faster.
So I gave you the example of our waste collection optimization system. But, for example, we also have a system where we are empowering citizens through a project called the Adapt Cascais Fund, where we entrusted them with some sort of capital that they can invest in the city themselves and bring out their knowledge. And we are here to provide with the support. This is a bit more of governance approach that we are using. So those are the two examples?
[00:11:56] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really interesting examples. Can you also share maybe a bit more about what do you think in Cascais, are the main challenges that you're facing to achieving net zero? And what do you really need to help accelerate the change and accelerate this faster?
[00:12:15] João Dinis: Well, decarbonization results from a significant shift on the way that our society is working and living and breathing.
We, as a world, in a global economy, obviously, we are all in the same system, in the same ecosystem, more or less. And of course, to shift all that, we need to do a very brave approach where we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, but also maintain ourselves competitive at the global scale. So how do we do that?
That's an extremely challenging question to ask. But even if we don't know the answer, we know that we have to decarbonize, and that's what we're doing. So what we're doing, for example, is making sure that we understand what are the biggest or the main sectors that cause emission here in Kishkaj, which is roughly the same in any european city, which is buildings and mobility. Those are the two main priorities for us when it comes to mobility. We developed Europe's first free public bus transportation system within a mobility as a service scope. So that means that we have a program, a mobility program called Mawbi Cascais, where you can use buses freely if you are a resident worker or a student here in Cascais. And at the same time, you can use our parking facilities to make sure that you can fade out the use of your car and fade in the use of public transportation. Or if you ride a bike, or if you need to rent a bike or a scooter, if you have an EV car electric vehicle, you can charge the car within our parking lots. And of course, by interacting and making sure that this mobility ecosystem is promoted in a way that it's allowing for decarbonization. So, of course, this is a process, and we have to foster and ferment the market that provides most efficient decarbonized solutions. When it comes to buildings, we are promoting renewable energy sources, we are promoting energy communities. These are obviously not new technologies. But when it comes to adoption or mainstreaming these technologies in any new building or anything that we are doing, that's the biggest challenge that we have. And of course, we are promoting that very successfully. No wonder. Again, let me just say this again, that we are so sunny that obviously it's a good approach for us, but we also are promoting energy efficiency in new buildings, of course, and then the refurbishment of older buildings. We are a matured urban municipality. That means that we are probably not going to build new things and new areas. What we're doing is refurbishment and transformation on existing ones. And that's the way that we are promoting decarbonization, mainly. But we are not doing this alone. We need to understand that we have partners on the private market that are putting out new solutions. We have regulations from the European Union, from national government that helps us to do this as well. So we're working with everyone. And if you have a new solution, if you have something that's helping on our mission, that's the way to move forward.
[00:15:38] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I love this open way of thinking. So what I got from that also is that you think that one of the main challenges is kind of balancing the economics, making all these solutions economically BABLE, and that they're supporting the economy while at the same time going net zero.
Do you have any examples of when that has really supported each other? I know with a lot of circular economy topics, for example, or maybe some others that you have in mind.
[00:16:09] João Dinis: Yeah, well, when it comes to circular economy, for example, we've been working with the private market that provides it solutions for the optimization of our collection efforts. So by having this, they provide us with, let's say a general or one size fits all solution. But because we are aiming for more decarbonization efforts and we want to reduce our consumptions, we need to develop something. So that's where the market solutions work together with us to increase their development levels. So that's something that we are doing. We work with a lot of private companies that want us to be their test beds of solutions, that want our input for their solutions. And of course, this is good for everyone because we are municipally owned, we are a public company. We are aiming to, let's say, further the development, the sustainable development and the decarbonization. We are not here to compete, we are here to collaborate. And of course, everyone who has this approach is welcome to sit on the table with us and discuss new ideas and solutions.
[00:17:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very nice.
And I was also told by one of our partners in the SMC net zero project that you're involved in an EU project called Klima Borough.
How is cash guys involved in different EU projects and other initiatives on the EU level?
[00:17:38] João Dinis: Well, we like to have impacts, right? So when we engage in european project applications, we aim to bring these new ideas that we've been discussing and making sure that they are properly implemented or tested here in Cascais. So the ultimate goal is to make a positive difference in our citizens'lives, and in the competitiveness of our city at, let's say, regional, european or even global scale.
That is the biggest goal that we have. So we're not aiming to do necessarily big studies or big assessments. We're just trying to test something out. There's enough people in the world that like to do that. We need to do a difference. That's our mission. Right. So the european projects provide us with this opportunity because it puts us together in consortium of entities that have different perspectives, different views. But the ultimate goal is to properly develop something tangible, something that we need and we implement. If we test it and if it's successful, we can either keep it or replicate, scale it up. If it doesn't work, then other people will know that it doesn't work. So this approach has been very successful. We love to work in european projects. Currently, on this day of the 25 January 2024, we have ongoing eight horizon Europe projects. Klima Borough is one of these eight. We have two live projects, we have many more national funded projects. And, yeah, so it's a lot of resources. Overall, I think that we are worth €74 million in consortium worth right now, which is significant for a small city like us.
But when it comes to Klima Borough, this project is extremely interesting for us. It's a completely new approach. And why is that? Because when we are working on innovation, sometimes we struggle with putting the innovation in procurement process. Right. We have to follow the public procurement process. What Klima borrow is helping us is the challenges that you are facing are the same challenges. They are shared by many other cities, many other companies and citizens alike. So instead of you being alone of thinking for something or solution and then putting it in a procurement process, let's all pick up these very intelligent and very hardworking partners and altogether think of a solution that fits your challenge. But we are well aware that it will fit other people's, other entities and cities challenges which are basically the same. So the procurement process is much stronger, it has a lot more input and most likely to succeed when it comes to impact. So after the implementation, it has a positive impact. So Klima borrow does that in energy, in mobility, in environmental, and all these key sectors for decarbonization and climate action. That's why we are so happy to take part of this project. This is pure innovation and something that is quite challenging for us, and hopefully it will definitely level up the impact of what we're doing.
[00:20:49] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. When we're talking to cities across the board, big and small, procurement is one of the main things that they say, oh, where's your pain point? And they say, procurement is consistent always. So I love to see projects that are working to ease that process a bit.
[00:21:04] João Dinis: Absolutely.
[00:21:07] Tamlyn Shimizu: I'm just wondering also, if you can speak a bit about any other use cases that you think are particularly interesting, you've mentioned quite some good ones, so I understand if you don't have too many more to mention, but I understand you're doing quite some work in the area. Do you have any other lessons learned to share with our listeners?
[00:21:29] João Dinis: Well, when it comes to european projects, I would probably share the main lessons that we've learned while working on a european project consortium and then what we've learned by working locally with climate and decarbonization innovation. So the first one I would say that is learn your place. So we all have different perspectives and different interests, of course. And if we understand what is our mission here, we can add something to a consortium of entities. So by understanding our mission and the role that we can have, the difference that we can have in a consortium, obviously this is useful for everyone. So that means that we can tackle all the challenges that are given in a very directed, impactful way, in a good way, of course.
So for example, us, I did mention that we are a city. We're looking to see the difference that we can make on citizens lives, and of course this european project can help us to do that. And we give back, we give them the perspective of citizens, we give them their voices. We already know what they like and they don't like what they want, what they want to see, what are the citizens struggling? And of course, by grasping all this information, we stir it in a pot that pops out a more narrowed, solution driven approach. And everybody wins with that. When it comes to decarbonization, we do have the need to further or level up the governance model. We need to make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to information and knowledge, and it's not that easy, unfortunately. But we need to make sure that people see the benefit of going this direction. We see a lot of disinformation going out, out in the street. This is a podcast. I know sometimes you need something a bit more, let's say, stirring, to make people, let's make people think about things.
We cannot agree on everything, but for example, we see a lot of entities now, or associations going out and fighting for climate action in a not so orthodox way. And I am personally fighting against that way of doing things because we see that it pushes people away. If you want to inform people, you have to engage with them. That's the only way that you're going to make decarbonization successful. People need information, but they don't need to be shout out they don't need to scream that. They don't need to be stopped on their daily lives. They need to be properly informed. We need to have a conversation. We need to demonstrate our work, and that's the only way that we're going to do. And that's one of the biggest challenges that we're having right now when it comes to decarbonization, lack of information and disinformation going out there.
[00:24:23] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
I also want to speak a bit. You said Cascais is obviously not a big city. Can you speak about what differences and challenges are you seeing come out of these big cities versus the smaller cities? And how can that correlate?
[00:24:43] João Dinis: So small is beautiful. First of all, small is beautiful. Cascais is a small and beautiful. You said it yourself, you've seen dolphins, right? But you can see dolphins in the morning, you could do mountain biking on down a mountain range in the afternoon. At nighttime, you can have dinner at a beautiful restaurant and then go out for music or culture experience. So small is beautiful, but that means that we have the same things, the same diversity that big cities have. But it is easier to work with communities. And when it comes to working in communities, in public governments such as ourselves, small is easier to test out and to have a bigger impact.
So it's faster, it's more linear, and you engage more, and then it's easier to replicate and to follow up on that replication or scaling up. Right. So working with smaller cities, it's so much easier. And I would say that we are more prone to innovation if something fails. Like, we work a lot on leaving labs, right? We're trying something out. So we go to a local community, a neighborhood, we talk with everyone and we say we're going to test it out. If it doesn't work, well, we've learned together, and then we'll do something different if it works. Thank you for helping us. This is a joint result. Everybody worked for this, not just us. It's easier on smaller cities, on bigger cities if it doesn't work. I would say that the negative political impact, it's way bigger. So people are a bit more resistant to this. And here, everybody likes to innovate. Everybody knows each other. Let's try to do something different. And you see so many wonderful innovations on smaller cities because they bring one thing, because small cities don't have as many resources. They have even something that's much more valuable than money or financial resources, which is creativity. And I see so much of it in smaller cities. I learned so much. Whenever I go to a smaller city on east european projects, I always take notes. So many notes. Like speak slowly, let me take notes.
I learned so much. So that's the beauty of small.
[00:27:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I agree. I'm personally also a bigger fan of small cities rather than large cities. I know that each have their benefits. I think historically we've seen these large cities innovating a lot because they had the resources. And what we're seeing the shift to is that the smaller cities now have so much more impact and are able to test so much more now. So I love your thoughts there. At the end of this interview section, I always give you, the interviewee, the opportunity for an open floor if you'd like it. I know we talked about a lot of different things and you've explained a lot of interesting projects to us. Do you have anything else that you think that we've missed that would be really important for the listeners to know?
[00:27:47] João Dinis: Well, I would say that when it comes to decarbonization or sustainable development in cities, I know it's easy to criticize things, but I would challenge citizens to take part in this change. And instead of just making, I would say an abstract critic, just make sure that you place yourselves in the position of all those stakeholders that are working very hard to provide a better life for everyone.
I would say be a bit more empathic and put yourself in the mayor's shoes, in my boss's shoes, my own shoes, the stakeholder shoes, and see why we are doing this. And if you don't agree with something, make a better effort to explain why you don't agree, because that will help us all.
It is with this governance approach, again, with the smaller cities, it's easier to do this, but it's with these smaller approaches that we can definitely learn from each other. I'm always learning every day. I'm learning a lot. I learn more from very unexpected sources. Maybe a citizen that teaches me something, maybe even a dog that shows me how to go through a green park or anyway, or a business person that had a challenge and had to surpass that challenge, or entrepreneurs, or researchers or academics that sometime in their lifetime they were a bit demotivated and then they found their passion and they went through with it. So just listen to people be part of the change. Don't just sit back and let the others do the work of innovation so you can benefit later on because you could benefit from it sooner.
That's what I would add here. Of course, I would admit that this is very poetic.
But we consider this in our work every single day. Me and all my colleagues in all different work areas, we consider this approach every single day. It's a public mission. It's the good for everyone on this planet. So, yeah, I would say that be a bit more empathic with everyone and be a bit more active.
[00:30:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really nice words to leave us with. I also have to say I learned from my dog all the time as well.
So now we get to one of our segments, and the segment that we chose for you today is called shout out.
[00:30:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: Shout out.
Mention a person, an organization or a city you think deserves more recognition in the field.
[00:30:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: Do you have someone in mind?
[00:30:32] João Dinis: I have an entity. I would very much shout out for the European Commission, that big entity that is out there. Everybody sees, everybody knows. They seem to be everywhere, but most of the citizens know. They think they see them on the television. They know who they are, they know who our representatives are, and they know the mission that they are trying to accomplish what they don't really see. But the European Commission is making a huge difference in our lives, in our neighborhood by allowing us to further this innovation that we've been discussing with those european funded projects, but also with a lot of courage to move forward with more sustainable policies. And they are leading the world when it comes to this, in decarbonization, sustainable development, circular economy, social sector as energy.
You know, the European Commission is a world leader entity when it comes to this. But when we say world, at the same time they have this incredible impact at the local scale, in our local communities, even in our street.
So I am well aware of that. I hope the European Commission is well aware of that too. And just I'd like to invite them sometime to visit Cascaish so they could see the tremendous impact that they have in our lives. I would say one example is that in one single project that they promoted with a small amount of money, I would say they changed the lives for the best of 33,000 people with environmental qualification project.
And this is one of, I would say, 30 projects that they have going on here in Cascais. So big shout out to them.
We're working together. We're the same species, despite our different sizing. So thank you so much.
[00:32:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: And we might have some listeners from the commission, actually. So if you're listening, come to Cascais as you're invited, also by Joel.
And it's also one of the organizations that's also criticized a lot to what you're speaking about. Right. So I like your shout out there. And of course, this project, why we're doing this podcast is EU funded as well. So yeah, thank you to the commission for that one.
The last question I have is the question we ask every single guest, and it's to you. What is a smart city?
[00:33:11] João Dinis: Well, a smart city is a city where all the talent in it, the human talent, the knowledge that people bring, is properly appraised and used on changing the city. That's all. I would say. I can rephrase that in a better, more nicer way, but basically, that is it. A smart city uses technology for the benefit of humans, for the benefit of what we want. Personal relations can be augmented by technology. And that's a smart city. We have tools, the market has tools provided for us. We have needs, we develop them. But a smart city uses this technology for the benefit of people to make sure that we are interacting more, we are living more, we are living better with less use of resources and making everyone happier in the process.
Difficult question.
[00:34:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I love this question. It seems like it should be such a simple question, right? But everyone has such a different answer. And I don't think I've gotten the response before about appraising and utilizing the human talent within the city. So I really like that aspect of what you said. So thank you so much. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge. You're very eloquent. You know a lot about the area. So thank you so much for coming on.
[00:34:43] João Dinis: Thank you for this extremely kind invitation. Again, I'm so happy to be here and if any of the listeners would like to learn more, go to our website and have fun. You'll spend many hours there with learning about our work. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[00:34:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, thank you so much. And thank you to all of our listeners.
Don't forget, you can always create a free account on bable-smartcity.eu and you can find out more about smart city projects, solutions and implementations. Thank you very much.
[00:36:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the city, the BABLE podcast where we bring together top actors in the Smart City arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the city is brought to you by BABLE smart cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to cocreation and implementation to learn more about us. Please visit the BABLE platform at BABLE Smartcities EU.
