Earthquakes, buildings and green energy: Turkey’s balancing act

While Turkey is well known as a hot and sunny holiday destination, it also faces low temperatures, which means it has both substantial heating and cooling needs for its building stock. The country also lies in one of the world’s most active seismic zones and energy efficiency measures need to be earthquake resistant As Turkey continues its economic development, the number of buildings is set to rise. This places an enormous burden on power supply systems and has already led to power outages and energy

Top tech not enough for district renovation success!

First in a series of three “Info Packs” from CITyFiED designed to unlock valuable insights and knowledge from the project tackles overcoming non-technological barriers in energy efficient renovation at district level. Additional new insights and public project deliverables available to registered users of cityfied.eu Based on workshops and semi-guided interviews with the project’s 11 cluster cities, CITyFiED partners and stakeholders analyzed their non-technological barriers and discussed possible

La Galerie by WE in association with World Climate Summit

Building on the success of 2015 in Paris for COP21, La Galerie by WE is taking place this year in Bonn, Germany, in association with World Climate Summit.  During the second and decisive week of COP23 - from 14 to 16 November - La Galerie by WE will be showcasing innovative low-carbon solutions developed and applied by companies, industries or territories, such as: equipment technologies, new models of organisation, reproductible best practices... In addition to the exhibition space, La Galerie by

What about GMOs in our homes?

Adopting biobased materials in home building can slash construction costs, but is Europe ready to put aside its fears about GM products? One of the main contributors of CO2 emissions are the homes we live in. In the EU, buildings are responsible for 36% of CO2emissions and 40% of energy consumption. Researchers argue that, compared with using traditional mineral-based materials in construction, “eco-friendly” durable composites can slash by half the embodied energy and improve insulation by 20%.

4 Technologies That Are Going To Shape Up Green Energy

Photosynthesis discovery can help design more efficient artificial solar cells. Vertical axis wind turbines can offer cheaper electricity to urban and suburban areas. Airlines can reduce their gas emissions with renewable fuel. These are some of the breakthrough innovations in renewable energy. While some of them may take years to become fully functional and used on a massive scale, the others are already making waves and paving the way to a greener future. Here are our top four picks of the technologies

Boosting renovation with an innovative service for home-owners

For building owners, the renovation process can be a hassle, shaped by the ambiguity of the measures to implement. Uncertainty is one of the reasons why the renovation rate continues to linger around 1% and private investments remain limited. Achieving the full market potential of renovation calls for a paradigm shift, where a more service-oriented supply-side together with a deeper awareness on the demand-side play key roles. The BetterHome case study shows how innovative business models can drive

London joins Breathe Life Campaign and takes action on air pollution

On Wednesday, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan signed London up to the Breath Life Campaign, joining the international movement of cities committed to tackle air pollution. The Breathe Life coalition is organised by WHO, UN Environment and Clean Climate and Clean Air Coalition aiming to mobilise cities and individuals ‘to protect our health and our planet from the effects of air pollution’. In the wake of the announcement, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, released a new research that reveals that every

The Smart Specialisation Platform on Bioenergy

The Smart Specialisation Platform on Bioenergy (S3P) is a tool to improve interregional cooperation through specialisation. From spring 2015 EC launched the initiative of the Smart Specialisation Platforms (S3P) as a joint initiative of the Directorates-General for Regional and Urban Policy, Energy, and the Joint Research Centre (JRC). Energy being a crucial societal challenge for Europe, the pace of development quickly picked up and the S3P-Energy emerged. Currently the S3P-Energy is divided in

REMOURBAN and Lighthouse cities at the “100% Climate Neutrality Conference” in Sønderborg

The Climate Conference in Sønderborg (Denmark) is a biannual appointment for representative from municipalities, industry and academia to enter a dialogue about the best solutions to reach their climate goals at city, regional and national levels. This year’s 100% Climate Neutrality Conference takes place on October 4-5. The event is an opportunity for stakeholders to assist to presentations on the state-of-the art in this domain and meet with other actors facing the climate neutrality challenge

Torrelago reaches prestigeous district heating award finals

CITyFiED’s Spanish demonstration site has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious Global District Energy Climate Awards - with winners due to be announced at an international conference 24-25 October in Doha, Qatar.  The submission was selected thanks to CITyFiED’s energy demand reduction by improving buildings insulation and greenhouse gas emissions and to increase the use of renewable energy sources. Three biomass boilers and a host of innovative technologies and methodologies for building