Solving urban energy challenges, one young European leader at a time!

It takes smart solutions to solve urban challenges; however, we also need innovative thinkers to figure out how to put them into place! EIT InnoEnergy Master School graduate Miguel Mósca is one of these trailblazers, paving the way for new solutions to be implemented in urban environments. Miguel’s shares his perspective – gained by studying and building a career focused on the broad European international landscape – and goals for the future.

A career in consulting

Miguel’s brings his vast energy, mobility, and project funding expertise to his consultant role at BABLE SMART CITIES. He joins BABLE, a company with a focus on bringing ideas into implementation and which coordinates a platform of more than 2000 smart cities practitioners acting as a knowledge and innovation community. He shares: “The immense number of challenges that cities face today aren’t new; however, they finally have the importance they should have. For example, reducing the number of private cars, creating accessible and inclusive mobility for all, ensuring consumed energy is clean, etc. – and then the BIG ONE, decarbonising their ecosystems. My role is to support local authorities to find the best solutions for their challenges, then support the finance and implementation of these projects.”

Sharing expertise

One of the ways Miguel can share his expertise to create smart cities is to contribute to important reports, such as “Urban Strategies during COVID 19” in partnership with EIT Urban Mobility. Miguel says, “The report addresses how urban strategies would change and cope with Covid-19. We surveyed 16 European cities to understand and analyse mobility strategies during the pandemic, concluding that the least affected cities were those with long-term plans and a bigger adaptation margin. Many measures were temporary (such as congestion reduction, less energy consumption and CO2 emissions). Still, others stayed as a trend (such as reclaiming urban space, more active mobility, “pop up” bike lanes, etc.). Several of these recommendations were actually made in the study.”

Choosing smart cities

Miguel shares what drew him towards this exciting topic – and the EIT InnoEnergy Master in Energy for Smart Cities programme: “The energy field is one of the most important in the world, and urban environments are the ones that struggle with energy the most. I’m excited to solve challenges that can have a direct, positive effect on people – and since this master combined Energy Engineering with an Innovation & Entrepreneurship Programme in two top ranked universities in Europe, it was perfect! It’s funny, but during my master, I believed the the projects I was involved in were the most important part of the programme. However, now I realise even though all activities I have participated in taught me a lot, still the biggest highlights were the colleagues that I made there and what I have learned from studying with such brilliant and different people! Diversity made the master programme so valuable and supported my personal growth – and the network of companies, entities, and opportunities that we are exposed to.”

A broader view

Miguel says, “I truly believe that Europe is the world leader in the transition to a sustainable future, so I decided to combine my studies with a journey to understand the European international landscape better. And what better place to study than Sweden (my first year at KTH Royal Institute of Technology) since they are one of the leaders in the Energy transition?! Studying in a European environment opened my opportunities and took down any borders that I perceived to exist. I wanted to do the same for future engineers, which led me to co-found the European Youth Energy Network with like-minded colleagues in Europe. We empower energy-focused youth organisations, connecting them with key actors in the energy sector to share knowledge on European and national levels.”

With Miguel’s eyes on the future, he states: “I strongly advocate for youth leadership in the energy field. Young people are the only ones able to drive change over the next 30 years to reach our carbon-neutral goals and then carry the right values into the next generations. As for me, I will keep supporting local and global impact in the energy field and paving the way for new solutions to be implemented in urban environments. It’s the only way forward!”