Last April the 7th, Catarina Rebelo da Silva, alumna of the Master's Degree in Engineering and Management of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Instituto Superior Técnico, was the winner of the 2nd edition of the E-REDES Open Data Academy Challenge, receiving the first prize of 6,000 euros. This award aims to recognise the best thesis which, within the scope of research on energy transition, have made use of data from the E-REDES Open Data portal.

Catarina’s dissertation, entitled “Drivers of Self-Consumption and Electric Mobility in Portuguese Municipalities: Econometric and Machine Learning Insights”, and supervised by Inês Carrilho Nunes, assesses the factors that explain self-consumption and electric mobility in Portugal at the municipal scale. The study centres on a crucial question for public policy and energy planning: what explains, at the municipal level, the uptake of residential self-consumption and electric mobility in Portugal? By analysing socio-economic, infrastructural, environmental and public policy determinants, and combining Econometric Models (Fixed-effects Regressions and Instrumental Variables) with machine learning models, Catarina Silva states that “E-REDES’s open-access data was fundamental to this research, particularly as it provides disaggregated information at the municipal level, something that remains a challenge in the Portuguese data sphere, especially in the area of the energy transition”. She adds that “this ‘productisation’ of data” is crucial for the future of the energy transition in the national context, having a direct impact on public policy planning.

Speaking on the importance of an award such as this, Catarina argues that it enables students from a wide range of disciplines to innovate in “how data can contribute to the country’s energy transition.” By encouraging the use of real-world data, she adds, the challenge brings academia and industry closer together and promotes knowledge with practical applications.