ITQB NOVA receives Honorable Mention in sustainability challenge
Oeiras, 5th August 2025
ITQB NOVA has recently taken a significant step to make laboratory work more sustainable. The Institute's Teaching Lab, designed and equipped to support educational activities, has earned an Honorable Mention in the Freezer Challenge, an international competition that promotes best practices in the management of cold storage equipment.
“The measures we implemented allowed us to save around 190 kWh per day, the equivalent to reducing our annual CO₂ emissions by approximately 17.5 tons”, reveals Teresa B Silva, from the Teaching Lab, who oversaw the participation in this challenge. These practices regarding refrigerators, ultra-low temperature freezers, and cold rooms included replacing older units with more energy-efficient models and promoting practices such as turning off unused equipment, regularly defrosting and cleaning units, discarding obsolete samples, and reorganizing storage. "One of the most impactful actions was increasing the temperature of ultra-low freezers from -80ºC to -70ºC", she explains.
The Honorable Mention serves as international recognition of the commitment of the Teaching Lab and ITQB NOVA to energy efficiency and sustainability. “This result validates the efforts we have made to improve cold equipment management and demonstrates that simple changes can have a significant impact on reducing our environmental footprint,” says João Crespo, ITQB NOVA Dean.
“This recognition is also an important milestone in the Teaching Lab’s Green Lab certification process and serves as added motivation for ITQB NOVA’s broader strategy to embed sustainability at the core of its operations, whether in scientific research, education, or institutional management”, he concludes.
This year’s Freezer Challenge involved over 3,000 laboratories from 36 countries. The Challenge is a joint initiative of My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL).
