From the frosty reaches of Umeå in eastern Sweden to the rolling hills of San Sebastian in Spain’s Basque Country, European cities have one refrain on their minds as the cold sets in: winter is coming and homes must be heated in a way that allows the EU to reach its goal of reducing energy consumption by 20% by the year 2020 .

A robotic arm grabs a long metallic cylindrical container and puts it smoothly into a steaming water basin.

There are different reasons to adapt new technologies in food processing. First, the industry hopes to create new foods that will provide a better taste and new sensations in the mouth .

Energy consumption in the construction sector is a key issue in the fight against climate change. It is often approached when planning new buildings, but there is little tendency to renovate the existing stock .

Thousands of kilometres of increasingly sophisticated and cutting-edge transmission lines, in other words supergrids , are on the EU agenda. Projects for high voltage links between countries are already being implemented.

Exascale supercomputing refers to super fast computers to be implemented between 2018 and 2020 to analyse massive volumes of data. The downside: they consume vast amounts of energy.

More than the 70 percent of the protein sources required by animals bred in the European Union are imported from non-EU countries . Soybean dominates the protein supply for animal feed .

Visionary, high-risk, long-term and breaking down traditional boundaries. These are just some of the key ingredients in breakthrough technologies being targeted by FET researchers across Europe.

Over the last few decades the energy landscape has been changing drastically in Europe. An increasing amount of electricity is now generated from renewable sources, such as solar and wind energy.

Despite increasing talk about renewable energy, many people remain far removed from what’s going on. To tackle this, various projects have been developed over the years helping users to better understand and use green energy sources.

This year’s EU Green Week is clear in its focus: “green jobs for a greener future.” It’s highlighting how environmental policies are helping to create new work opportunities and a demand for new types of competences.

Industrial food treatment processes need to tackle bacteria that can spoil food . These microorganisms, although non-pathogenic, can make food products unpalatable and affect how long they can be stored for.

The 43-story Strata tower in London was one of the first buildings in the world to incorporate wind turbines into its structure. It has three small turbines – each with a rated capacity of 19 kilowatt hours – built into its roof.

Smart buildings offer better energy efficiency and the kind of futuristic mod cons that appeal to many consumers, but some experts warn our appetite for new technology is putting us at risk from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks .

The bakery industry is a large supplier of jobs and revenue, but on the other side of the coin it is hungry for energy.

Smart buildings appear to respond to a range of energy challenges found in Europe today. Improved efficiency would help consumers reduce income spent on energy consumption, reduce greenhouse emissions and also help EU countries meet the goals of the 2030 energy strategy .

The pioneering city of Stuttgart, Germany, was one the first to apply an innovative financing scheme back in 1995 and since then it has been bearing its fruit: energy-efficiency funding has reduced the city’s CO 2 emissions by tens of thousands of tonnes.

Buildings account for 36% of CO 2 emissions in Europe, and energy consumption in this sector has increased in recent decades.

Today, one of the new challenges for the construction industry is the use of textiles, coming from the clothing and footwear industries.

Consumption of seafood is regarded as healthy since it contains high quality proteins, vitamins and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. But it might also put us at risk of exposure to environmental pollutants.