Islamic finance abides by the Sharia law. It demands socially responsible investment, with a real impact on the community.

Today the challenge is to enable better transmission from one country to another while reducing CO 2 with efficient links between renewable energy and the grid.

Italy is famous all over the world for its historical cities, but their beauty is not enough anymore. They want to be smart. Two of the experimental forerunners developing energy efficiency measures are Udine and Salerno .

There are three ways a crowdfunding project can be financed. Lending: the entrepreneurs borrow money and pay interest; equity: investors in the project become its shareholders; donations: no reward is to be expected (there is a fourth way, a mix of equity and lending called “hybrid”).

When you see a beautiful shirt on a fashion model or in a shop window, you ask yourself: shall I buy it? Can I afford it? But before deciding, there is another question to be answered : How much damage ...

It's a brand new sector: the first steps date back to 2012. Today energy crowdfunding is a way of financing solar panel or wind turbine projects.

From pollution levels and the number of traffic accidents to safer public spaces and more efficient heating in buildings:  to what extent can the smartness of a city be quantified?  And  is it possible to measure the quality of life  for an urban area through numerical parameters? It’s all about collecting data that is reliable and making sense of the numbers afterwards.

In the late 1980s, the German-born chemist Michael Grätzel literally tied his name to an invention that is hailed as a  revolution in renewable energy .

To date, European consumers pay more for energy from renewables than for energy from conventional resources. One of the reasons is still the immaturity of the technology used for harnessing and distributing renewable energy.

Bioenergy represents two-thirds of the energy produced from renewable sources in Europe, though biomass sustainability is not taken for granted.

Traditionally our electricity grids were designed to move power from large nuclear and fossil fuel power plants to consumers, but renewable energy will see changes to allow smaller power generation from wind and solar to be hooked up to the grid.

The European grid already faces transmission challenges, as the alternative current (AC) infrastructure has almost reached its transport capacity.

Innovative technologies can be used to retrofit old buildings as a means to save energy. This is precisely what the Bricker project is aiming to achieve.

Cuatro de Marzo is a district in the southern part of the Spanish city of Valladolid. It is a dense residential area with 190 privately-owned dwellings, developed in 1955.

Restoring historic buildings and saving energy at the same time is now a reality. Passive house window expert Franz Freundorfer developed the heat-saver for the Waaghaus in Bolzano, a building from the 13th century .

A well-accepted measure for climate protection involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions . And buildings have the greatest energy saving potential, according to the official EU Energy Efficiency Plan 2011 .

Historical buildings and town quarters are an integral part of the European cultural heritage. However, such buildings are often not very energy efficient and thus contribute substantially to the emission of greenhouse gases.

To make a building sustainable, taking into account its climatic conditions is key. No better examples than the three showcase buildings under the EU funded  DIRECTION project.

Sustainable buildings partly depend on control strategies to be energy efficient.

Bulgaria has not had the most auspicious of years in terms of its commitment to a green transition. In January 2023, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to backtrack on plans for an early phase-out of coal-fired power plants.