 Your new post is loading...
About half of the EU’s final energy consumption goes to heating, making it a key focus area in Europe’s efforts to improve energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing, published this week, analyses this energy segment, urging investment in building renovations and modern renewable energy solutions. Renovations and…
Bulgaria's lawmakers have voted to roll back plans to decarbonise the country's energy sector.
The move came on Thursday after as more than 1,500 miners and utility workers demonstrated in front of the parliament in support of the coal industry. They were protesting against plans for an early phase-out of coal-fired power plants.
For decades, scientists have called for a transition to clean energy to prevent the worst impacts of climate change but fears that such a transition would be costly and harm the economy have held back progress. However, a study from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Post-Carbon Transition published this week shows the reverse: an…
While the EU is planning to decarbonise buildings across the bloc to advance the green transition, local authorities are calling for more support to face a shortage of skilled workers to design and implement decarbonisation projects.
Ground and air source heat pumps are expected to play a major role in cutting the use of gas for heating. But one major problem with them is that they need a lot of space. For those living in dense housing it’s just not practical. District heat networks are the usual alternative, but the dense urban areas they serve need to be near a large source of waste heat like power stations or other industrial units. David Barns at the University of Leeds looks at Shared Ground Heat Exchanges as another solution. Here, a set of shared boreholes draw heat from the ground, sufficient for a single street. Each house would only need a small heat pump similar in size to a conventional gas boiler. The business model will need service providers to coordinate with the street householders and the local authorities, and get their consent before making the investment in the shared system.
This week, the Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) published a new report on nearly zero energy building standards in six member states that show decarbonisation of new buildings in is not happening fast enough. A failure to decarbonise newly constructed buildings could prevent the EU from achieving its climate targets for 2030 and 2050, according…
Institutrices, agents de mairie, juges, ministres ou pompiers : toutes et tous ont un point commun, celui de faire partie de la vaste Administration publique française. Et toutes et tous ont un rôle à jouer, à leur échelle, pour contribuer à la transition énergétique du pays.
On observe partout en France de nombreuses bonnes pratiques, et une réelle volonté d’engagement de la part des membres de l’Administration. Ce rapport final dresse un état des lieux de ces actions, et propose des pistes opérationnelles pour accélérer le rythme de décarbonation à tous les niveaux, de la commune aux services de l’État, afin de rendre le service public durablement résistant aux chocs énergétiques et climatiques.
Plenty of research has shown that in the long term, the costs of climate change will be much greater than the costs of retooling society to reduce emissions and keep climate change in check. But the conventional wisdom has been that it will take many decades to “break even” on decarbonization from a financial point of view. And the prospect of short-term pain for only long-term gain has made it difficult to generate political support for climate action now.
Net-zero emission targets are the new normal for both governments and businesses. But achieving them is often a different story. Certain emissions are difficult to avoid easily, so neutralising them by investing into climate action projects in developing countries has become a fixture in many companies' climate plans.
Un an après avoir été retenues dans la démarche nationale '' Territoires d’innovation'', les premières actions du projet '' La Rochelle territoire zéro carbone '' se lancent. La première coopérative locale du carbone est en cours de constitution.
Electricity from heat pumps, combined with a shift to renewables in district heat networks, emerged as the winning technologies to drive the Finnish capital’s transition to carbon neutrality by 2035. Finland has “a very strict target” to become carbon neutral by 2035 and the same goal applies to its capital city, said Kaisa-Reeta Koskinen, manager at the Carbon Neutral Helsinki project. Helsinki has a huge challenge decarbonising its district heating system, which is currently entirely fuelled with coal and gas, she told a EURACTIV virtual event on 20 May.
Annual GHG emissions from U.S. households peaked in 2005, the researchers report in Environmental Research Letters. Since then, emissions have been decreasing by about 2% per year.
One reason for this that newer homes and appliances are more energy efficient. But the main explanation is that the U.S. electric grid is decarbonizing. Less fossil fuel power and more renewable power means that the average kilowatt hour of electricity results in fewer GHG emissions than it used to.
The decrease isn’t fast enough to keep global warming within 1.5 °C – that would require emissions to fall about 7% per year.
Les villes moyennes françaises ont un potentiel très important et largement sous-estimé en matière de décarbonation ! Découvrez nos neuf propositions.
|
The European Union needs to reform its electricity market as quickly as possible in order to stabilise prices for consumers and stimulate investment in renewables, EU politicians have told EURACTIV.
Local community groups are often seen as being against renewable energy sites or other projects to support the energy transition. But there is a rise in different ownership and funding models that includes local residents who do want to support the quest for a decarbonised economy
FULFILL – Fundamental Decarbonisation through Sufficiency by Lifestyle Changes - Fulfill Sufficiency
This “Cost Study of the Building Decarbonization Code” analyzes the incremental first cost and life cycle cost of two common building types that follow the code language in NBI’s Building Decarbonization Code. The study, which was supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), analyzes first costs for both all-electric and mixed-fuel paths for single-family and medium office prototypes. It also includes life cycle cost analysis for the single-family scenario. Ultimately, the cost study found that all-electric homes achieve construction savings and mixed-fuel buildings households are only nominally more expensive. It also found marginal additional first costs for property owners of the all-electric medium office building prototype, with most of those attributed to electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Additionally, researchers determined that life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) for the single-family prototypes produced both economic and societal benefits. Researchers used cost data from New York State, a relatively expensive market, in colder Climate Zone 5A.
The Lisbon Municipal Assembly approved the proposal to make public transport free to use for young up to the age of 18, higher-education students up to the age of 23 and for elderly residents above the age of 65.
The measure, which is seen as a tool “to combat climate change”, as indicated by the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, will have a total annual cost of around 14.9 million euros, and should come into force in the coming months. The City will conclude an agreement with the public transit operator TML, which will extend the provision of free rides for the above-mentioned groups until 31 December 2025.
Social justice and decarbonization
The mayor of Lisbon is a firm advocate of the measure, which he sees as historic and as a way to make the Portuguese capital a model city in the fight against climate change.
"This step is social justice, it is justice for those who want to change the world and who really want to make the world better so that we have a planet we can live on. This measure is also justice in the decarbonization of the planet that we need so much, and this measure is to improve people's lives," he declared, as quoted by Jornal de Negocios.
In October, the UK government released two different strategies on how to achieve its net zero emissions target by 2050 – the net zero strategy and the heat and buildings strategy. Although both look at how to decarbonise the UK’s economy, they also both overlook an important feature of the future of energy consumption – the demand for cooling.
The Energy Community Secretariat launched a Discussion Paper on how the heating and cooling sector can contribute to decarbonisation in the Energy Community. The Paper provides insights into different policy options to support the development of heating and cooling and district heating sectors, based on the assessment of National Energy and Climate Plans of seven EU Member States. The focus is placed on possible regulatory and financial solutions for the integration of renewable energy in the heating and cooling sector.
The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy sets out how the UK will decarbonise our homes, and our commercial, industrial and public sector buildings.
As part of setting a path to net zero by 2050, the strategy will be simple, low-cost and green to ensure it remains affordable and fair for all households.
Bike share equity remains an uphill battle in impoverished neighborhoods and communities populated primarily by low-income residents and people of color. However, neither catering to affluent, white men nor community apathy and indifference are necessarily to blame. The reasons are complicated, but progress is happening, and more inroads are on the horizon.
Baptisée “le papillon de la mer Égée” en raison de sa forme, cette île de 1 300 habitants est visitée chaque année par quelque 70 000 touristes pour ses plages immaculées, sa mer cristalline et ses maisons blanches.
A l’horizon 2026, le projet ambitionne de faire d’Astypaléa “la première île durable de Méditerranée”, où “la mobilité sera électrique, alimentée par une électricité verte produite localement”, promet le gouvernement grec, qui a déployé mercredi plusieurs ministres dont le Premier ministre Kyriakos Mitsotakis sur l’île de l’archipel du Dodécanèse.
Spain’s parliament voted in favour of the long-awaited climate law, which commits the country to cut emissions 23% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.
The law bans all new coal, gas and oil exploration and production permits with immediate effect, prohibits the sale of fossil fuel vehicles by 2040 and enshrines a goal to generate 74% of the country’s electricity with renewable sources by 2030.
The EC is currently considering a mission proposal to achieve “100 climate neutral cities by 2030 – by and for the citizens”. Arguing for its endorsement and the proposed umbrella governance, Simon Skillings and Eleonora Moro at E3G explain why cities are an ideal laboratory for tackling the big unanswered question: which European Green Deal …
|
Scoop.it!
