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2023 will mark the beginning of the decline in fossil fuels, following the peak of global electricity emissions in 2022, according to a new report released on Wednesday (12 April) by energy think-tank Ember.
The EU has today approved proposals to improve the energy performance of buildings.
Earlier today, a meeting of the European Parliament Industry, Research, Telecoms and Energy Committee was held today in Brussels.
Marine Cornelis examines rising energy poverty in Europe – and what consumers can do about it.
How can households be sustainably protected against rising energy prices and lifted out of energy poverty? Energy poverty already has dramatic social and health consequences for 50 to 125 million Europeans.
Due to the gas and electricity price crisis and soaring inflation, many more people might feel the cold and must make terrible trade-offs, such as having to choose between buying schoolbooks and clothes or feeding their kids.
Energy communities can make an enormous contribution to climate goals but their efficiency and effectiveness can be boosted, smartEn advises.
On Watt Matters this week, Monica Morawiecka from the Regulatory Assistance Project and Julian Popov, a fellow of the European Climate Foundation, discuss what is required to make eastern Europe's energy transition a reality
Increased recycling has come at the expense of greener activities like reuse. The European Union now needs to adopt a multidimensional approach to tackle Europe's waste problem and move towards circularity, writes Joan Marc Simon. Looking back, in the last 30 years, Europe has reduced landfilling by around 30% and doubled recycling and incineration figures. At the same time, reuse/refill has been decimated and we are generating 20% more waste per capita. In other words, the bottom of the waste hierarchy has been getting fatter at the expense of the upper side. This confirms that, when the wise man pointed at the moon, all we could see was the waste accumulating on the finger. But it was just a pointer, a symptom. The good news is that we are finally collectively understanding that the solution lies elsewhere.
Almost two decades since euros first began circulating, the EU is preparing for the May 2021 launch of the Conference on the Future of Europe. For too long, conversations on the future of European democracy and the future of the eurozone have been held separately. This is a vital opportunity to bridge the two, argues Edouard Gaudot. The euro has survived thanks to short-term fixes such as the EU’s pandemic recovery fund, but unless the eurozone is made sustainable and reconciled with national constitutions and democracies, the most critical link in the EU’s chain will remain weak.
The new US administration offers the opportunity for a reboot of transatlantic relations, especially in relation to civil society. The calls and grievances expressed by Women’s movements, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the climate generation resonate strongly in both Europe and the US. These movements are central actors in a potential reconfiguration of the EU-US relationship. Their diverse and participatory nature, as well as the commitment to justice they embody, could form the foundation for building a new transatlantic narrative.
In defining pathways for Europe to become climate-neutral by 2050, low-carbon hydrogen has entered the forefront as a potential solution in many applications. However, the advent of the hydrogen economy has so far been hampered by the chicken-and-egg problem of hydrogen infrastructure. Now, a new study by Agora Energiewende entitled “No-regret hydrogen: Charting early steps for H₂ infrastructure in Europe” identifies early opportunities for anchoring hydrogen infrastructure around inescapable demand.
How should the EU reach its 55% emissions reduction goal for 2030: Strengthening the existing policy architecture with effort sharing and national targets, or moving to a European-wide carbon pricing system with no national binding targets? A new study explores how keeping the system of national sectoral targets would lead to greater reductions of GHGs and higher energy savings.
La sobriété énergétique, energy sufficiency en anglais, est l’objet de recherches de plus en plus nombreuses tout en étant également mise en application dans différents projets, différents pays. Elle est malgré tout souvent le parent pauvre des politiques publiques qui développent des stratégies d’efficacité énergétique et de développement des énergies renouvelables en ratant cette première marche de la transition énergétique.
La sobriété énergétique est une approche qui vise à réduire les consommations d’énergie à travers des changements de comportements, de styles de vie et d’organisation collective.
Under the Paris Agreement’s “ratchet mechanism” nations were supposed to formally submit more ambitious emissions cutting commitments
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Despite the ongoing energy crises, the use of coal and gas over this winter has not increased as much as some feared. Europe is on the verge of breaking its addiction to fossil fuels
The European Union is sick of talking about climate change; now it wants to act. The world’s second-largest economy is attempting to become the first climate neutral continent by 2050 while slashing its emissions 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. To reach these milestones, the bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, unveiled the Green Deal in 2019—a proposal to radically redesign Europe’s energy, food, and transport systems. “This is Europe’s man on the moon moment,” said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
The role of the prosumer within the European energy transition is becoming more of a priority from all angles. And while this is being recognised by European policy – packages such as REPowerEU and the Green Deal for example provide a lot of momentum to advance energy communities and reap their potential benefits – more is certainly needed.
Member states have pledged to redistribute the energy sector's surplus profits to low income customers
Europe was not prepared for the extreme heat it experienced this infernal July.
That's obvious from the heat wave's death toll so far — with more than 2,000 people known to have died in Spain and Portugal, a number expected to climb when data is released in France, the U.K., Belgium and the Netherlands and from across much of Central and Eastern Europe, where the heat still lingered over the weekend.
Modelling tools are becoming increasingly important to policy makers for creating transition pathways. More detail is required as the pace of change accelerates. Yet complexity is increasing as new technologies and solutions come online. And those models are needed at the local level, not just the national and global. It’s why the EU is funding, […]
More than any other European institution, the European Parliament bears the responsibility for nurturing the development of a truly trans-European citizenry. The path to building this European political and public sphere is riddled with pitfalls, created by both the EU’s political ecosystem and national political actors. Past, present, and potential future initiatives are promising, but they must be matched with sufficient political will and ambition.
The Conference on the Future of Europe is an exercise in democracy, and at the same time, the main theme of the Conference is European democracy. But the problem is broader: democracy itself is in crisis, write Herman Van Rompuy and Žiga Turk. One of the reasons is that citizens are facing threats such as unemployment, financial uncertainty, irregular migration, climate change, inequalities, terrorism, COVID pandemic and others. They feel insufficiently protected on one hand and powerless on the other.
The European Solar Initiative (ESI), supported by the European Commission, aims to re-develop the photovoltaics (PV) industry value chain in Europe and capture the booming European demand for solar PV, estimated at 20GW per year for the next decade, creating an additional EUR 40 billion GDP annually and 400 000 direct and indirect jobs. The ESI will accelerate Europe’s climate agenda and economic recovery, contributing to the delivery of the European Green Deal objectives.
Eight EU member states have yet to submit their national recovery and resilience plans to the European Commission to access EU post-crisis funds for COVID-19, while 19 countries have already done so, including Portugal.
Les énergies renouvelables ont dépassé les énergies fossiles comme source de production d'électricité pour la première fois l'an dernier dans l'Union européenne (UE27), selon une étude annuelle réalisée par les groupes de réflexio
Renewable power generation in the EU has nearly doubled since 2005, producing 34% of electricity in 2019 compared with 38% from fossil fuels
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