Energy Transition in Europe | www.energy-cities.eu

Buildings are accountable for 53% of carbon emissions in the city of Rome, and this is the main issue that needs to be addressed in order to achieve climate neutrality, Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri told EURACTIV in an interview.

The Romanian city of Brasov will install smart eco-islands, recycling and waste collection points that report their capacity to authorities. The city hopes to reduce the trash that ends up in landfill..

Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomašević, a former environmental activist, has announced the introduction of a new bulky waste management system that should save Croatia’s capital EUR 4.4 million annually. The measure was part of the program of his green-left coalition We Can!, which focuses on energy transition, waste and water management, sustainable mobility, and the introduction of circular economy principles.

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.

Scotland is using the resources of three planets but adopting a new Circular Economy approach could change things for the better.

As the new Commission President Ursula von der Leyen mentioned in her Political Guidelines in July, “circular economy is key for developing Europe’s future economic model.” However, to make this vision a reality, companies need to be convinced of Europe’s path towards eco-friendly production.

Tårnby Public Utility paves the way with a new visionary project in which an energy station will become the new gathering point for the area’s district heating and cooling. Here the two systems will utilize the energy from the waste water. The plant will be the first of its kind in Denmark. Where we have previously seen district cooling that utilizes the cold from seawater, the connection between district heating, district cooling and waste water is groundbreaking in Denmark.

Si en zone rurale un dimensionnement assez grand des méthaniseurs n'est pas un problème, l'ambition de mieux valoriser les biodéchets des zones urbaines impose une autre stratégie. D'où la tendance du marché de concevoir des unités conteneurisées.

Excess heat produced across Europe could almost power the entire region but preventing this waste is largely being ignored as a solution to the energy crisis, say environmental experts.

This week, authorities in Vienna announced that Wien Energie, the city’s energy company, has set up heat pumps in one of the natural thermal water pools in the Austrian capital. Said pumps will collect heat from wastewater and feed it back to the district heating system, providing green energy for 1,900 households in the Oberlaa district.

On 11 August, the City of Prague reported that it is preparing to convert slag produced from the incineration of waste into building materials. According to Hlubuček, the incinerator produces 65 to 70 thousand tons of slag annually. What is more, the city pays approximately CZK 40 million (EUR 1.5 million) a year for landfilling.
Thanks to research and technological innovations, this waste can now be converted into raw materials and used in the construction industry. More specifically, clean slag reportedly has various useful properties which would allow it to be utilised as a base layer in the construction of roads.
Hlubuček discussed the advantages of transforming slag into raw materials, stressing that it would result in great financial savings and a reduction of CO2 emissions. In turn, it would help bring the capital closer to achieving its climate goals.

Upon completion the plant will produce approximately 55 megawatts (MW) of heat and 19 MW of electricity. Around 180 000 tonnes per year of unrecyclable municipal waste will be used to fuel the plant. The installation set up by Toplofikacia EAD, a wholly owned Sofia municipality company will be connected to the Sofia district heating network. The construction will be finalised by the end of 2023.

Copenhagen has launched initiative to encourage public rubbish collection, announced the Municipality. The city asks what would happen if all 626,350 Copenhageners gathered just one piece of garbage a day during the summer. People are encouraged to pick up waste in the Danish capital, take a selfie and post it on Facebook or Instagram, using the hashtag, #takforskrald or join Snapchat and send snap to ‘kbhkommune’. The only condition of the competition is that people have to collect garbage only within Copenhagen. The competition runs until August 12 after which the city will draw a random winner for the prize, which is a cargo bike.

A new waste-to-chemical facility at Rotterdam Port will be able to convert up to 360 000 tonnes of waste into 220 000 tonnes of “green” methanol, which adds up to the total annual waste of more than 700,000 households. Such a transformation of non-recyclable waste into “green” methanol will help lower carbon emissions by creating a raw material that can be used to replace fossil fuels, offering clean energy to fuel the chemical industry and transportation sector.