Energy & Environment Archives

To succeed in renovating the European building stock by 2050, all the governance levels need to be involved, from local to national, French MP Marjolaine Meynier-Millefert told EURACTIV, adding that people who cannot afford the costs of renovation must not be left behind.

Industrial sectors such as cement and steelmaking will continue emitting CO2 even if they switch to 100% renewable energy, says Camilla Skriung who calls on the Norwegian government to take action now – without waiting for EU funding – in order to get the first projects off the ground.

At the Healthy Buildings Day (HBD) in Brussels last week (26 September), academic experts painted a vivid picture of how the edifices we spend our days in shape our lives and the planet itself.

As Poland readies itself to welcome the world in December, the man tasked with organising the COP24 Katowice summit told EURACTIV how preparations are going for what is likely to be make-or-break climate talks for the Paris Agreement.

Nearly half of Europe’s energy is used up by buildings but new rules adopted by the EU earlier this year wants to inject efficiency en masse into the sector and improve massively the edifices in which we live and work. EURACTIV spoke with the lawmaker behind the new legislation.

Investors increasingly have to take into account the legal risks associated with global warming and more and more of them are adopting a socially responsible approach, Phillippe Desfossé told EURACTIV France as Climate Week opens in New York.

Distributed energy solutions such as solar PV, batteries, and smart controls are getting cheaper by the day and will soon outperform traditional energy sources such as coal, gas, and nuclear power, says Hervé Touati. In any case, Blockchain-type solutions will be needed for the mass deployment of electric vehicles, he warns.

It’s a contradiction that policymakers are currently struggling to resolve. But fossil fuel back-up plants are probably necessary in the short term in order to give EU countries the confidence to bring in higher shares of renewable electricity, says Michael Pollitt.

Ukraine should decrease its transit fees if it wants to undercut the business case for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bringing Russian gas directly to Germany, says Thierry Bros.

The risk of toxic substances contaminating food already exists with virgin plastic, so it will only be higher with recycled packaging coming from old plastics that may contain banned chemicals, says Floriana Cimmarusti.

The 32% renewable energy objective for 2030 agreed at the EU level in June was a good result, says Jeppe Kofod, but it’s still insufficient to live up to the Paris accord, he told EURACTIV in an interview, setting out the agenda for clean energy battles in the years ahead.

The energy performance contract model can turn energy efficiency renovation of buildings into a truly popular policy objective among politicians in Central and Eastern Europe because it can be done without any use of public money and has no impact on public debt, says Ivan Lesay.

European Union negotiators will turn their attention to revamping the bloc's electricity market rules under the Austrian Presidency but the issue of so-called capacity mechanisms continues to define the debate.

International oil companies have “the financial muscle, the experience, the technical skills, and the supply chain” necessary to take part in the global renewable energy revolution, argues Eirik Waerness of Equinor.

The European Union needs to “significantly improve its policy package” for 2030 in order to align itself with the emission trajectories of the Paris Agreement, according to renowned Belgian climate scientist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele.

So-called “capacity mechanisms” are being set up across EU member states to remunerate power stations that remain on standby in case of demand peak. While a European framework is needed to regulate those schemes, Fabien Roques believes they should be adapted to local circumstances. EURACTIV.fr reports.

Former MEP Claude Turmes is attending his first Environment Council meeting on Monday (25 June), days after he left the European Parliament to join the government of Luxembourg. In an interview with EURACTIV, he explains how he sees his new role and what he hopes to achieve.

While some countries like the United Kingdom quit brown coal some time ago, Germany is still struggling. A new commission is meant to sketch out structural changes but the Bundesrepublik is no longer a pioneer of climate protection, one political scientist told  EURACTIV Germany

Any country resisting an EU-wide objective to reduce emissions to net-zero by mid-century is essentially “in the same camp as Mr. Trump” when it comes to climate change, says Claude Turmes, the lead European Parliament negotiator on the Energy Union governance proposal.

The 32% renewable energy target agreed by EU negotiators last week is still “much lower” than what would be needed to reach the Paris goals on climate change, argue experts at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Germany.

“Mother Nature” is changing quickly and this requires the adoption of technology-driven solutions that will help both growers and consumers, Jim Collins, the chief operating officer of Corteva Agriscience, the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont, told EURACTIV.

The number of oil refineries in Europe is likely to decrease but those that remain will be truly competitive, highly technological and highly efficient, Ilshat Sharafutdinov told EURACTIV in an interview.

Electric vehicles have come on in leaps and bounds since Commission Vive-President Maroš Šefčovič launched the Energy Union back in 2015. Now, he's expecting the integration of renewables and the redesign of the electricity market to boost the EV revolution even further.