Ideas for early detection of forest fires, insulation made from fungi and the decarbonisation of industrial heat set to represent Portugal in European cleantech competition

Portugal will be represented in the European final of ClimateLaunchpad 2026, the world's largest cleantech business idea competition, with a thermal battery that stores renewable energy, a firefighting solution that simulates fire behaviour scenarios, and acoustic insulation panels made from natural materials.

The three winners were chosen at the national final, organised by UPTEC – Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto. Eight projects took to the stage to present their solutions to the jury and the public, in a competition supported by Fundação Santander, MEXT, the Order of Engineers, and Prio.

First place was won by Latent Energy Systems, which is developing a thermal storage solution to decarbonise industrial heat. Created by João Pedro Freitas and Vicente Portela da Silva, the technology takes the form of a battery that stores renewable energy and releases it as thermal energy whenever needed, allowing various industries to replace fossil fuels without the intermittency of renewable energy.

Second place went to SIION, which presented a proposal for tackling forest fires. The platform simulates, in real time, thousands of plausible fire behaviour scenarios, recommending the right teams and equipment, at the place and moment they are needed, to support faster decisions on the ground.

Third place, FungiFoam, develops insulation panels grown from mycelium, the vegetative part of fungi. As it is not industrially manufactured, the product is carbon-negative, non-toxic and fire-resistant, and can also be used as acoustic insulation in interior applications.

After the pitches, the final of the competition featured a round-table discussion dedicated to entrepreneurship in the age of sustainability, moderated by journalist Luísa Correia, with the participation of Laetitia Arrighi de Casanova, Director of B Lab Portugal, Luís Monteiro, Head of the Environment and Energy Efficiency Division at APDL, and Eduardo Cardoso, Sustainability Manager at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, as well as Bruno Santos, co-founder of Savearth, the winning startup of the previous edition of ClimateLaunchpad.

Running in Portugal since 2016, the competition has already received more than 260 applications, and has supported more than 120 teams and more than 230 participants. Globally, ClimateLaunchpad has had more than 18,000 business ideas submitted and 5,400 projects supported, from 49 countries.