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

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 …

Denmark has led the way on decarbonisation of heating, with a rapid transition away from fossil fuels aided by its large scale adoption of heating networks over the past 40 years. Instead of exchanging individual heating appliances in every home and commercial building, the Danes are centrally converting their heat networks to renewable energy, saving citizens a pile of money in the process

L'Allemagne lance deux projets phare de sa transition énergétique. Elle lance la facturation de chaque tonne de CO2 émise par les transports et les habitations et la sortie progressive du charbon avec la fermeture d'une 1ère unité de centrale thermique. Dans les deux cas, ces mesures sont le fruit de longues négociations politiques de la coalition d'Angela Merkel, sous la pression des défenseurs du climat qui jugent que les décisions ne sont pas assez ambitieuses.

Experts disagree about which technologies should be used to meet the EU’s climate change targets.

Step by step, hydrogen has worked its way into the heart of the energy transition: as a storage medium for renewable energy; a fuel of the future for ships and planes; and a replacement for fossil fuels in homes, power and industry.

As the urgency of the climate crisis grows, new analysis reveals that coal is no longer the cheapest way to power the global economy. The cost of clean energy has fallen so far that new renewables are now cheaper than new coal plants virtually everywhere, and there are specific financial strategies that utilities and policymakers can use to engineer a faster phaseout of coal in various regions of the world.
How to Retire Early: Making Accelerated Coal Phaseout Feasible and Just estimates that replacing the entire fleet of global coal plants with clean energy plus battery storage could be done at a net annual savings as early as 2022. The rapidly declining costs of renewables push net annual savings to $105 billion in 2025. All this is before considering coal’s dire health, climate, and environmental impacts, or accounting for the social and environmental benefits of reducing pollutants. Currently, coal phaseout hasn’t kept pace with eroding economics.

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.

Les villes moyennes françaises ont un potentiel très important et largement sous-estimé en matière de décarbonation ! Découvrez nos neuf propositions.

There will be social, cultural and relational repercussions that must be accounted for to uphold just transition: to leave none behind.

Decarbonisation of heating requires switching from systems and appliances that combust fossil fuels to those that rely on renewable energy. Nowhere is the switch more challenging to achieve for existing building stock than in the UK. If it can be done there, it can be done anywhere

Le projet Goéland est issu d’un groupe d’étudiants réunis afin de proposer une réflexion sur la transition écologique de notre société. Convaincus que les villes moyennes peuvent jouer un rôle
important dans la décarbonation de nos sociétés, et constatant que peu d’études synthétiques sont consacrées à cet échelon territorial, nous avons souhaité synthétiser les connaissances sur le sujet dans ce rapport, afin d’en faciliter l’accès aux élus locaux et aux citoyens en hiérarchisant les priorités (notre critère principal étant la décarbonation).

Decarbonizing is a big issue
– and the theme of this issue of Hot Cool.
It is all about solutions reducing CO2 emissions - linked to the district heating network, utilizing excess electricity from wind turbines and solar cells, surplus heat from data-centers, eFuel production, and heat pumps absorbing energy from the ocean.