Just imagine: you get back home one evening, unlocking your door with the torch light of your mobile. You sit down on your sofa, download a film 100 times faster than currently possible and enjoy the movie on a fully secure wireless connection.

Crowdfunding is considered by some experts to have the same effect on banks as Uber has on taxis. Green energy crowdfunding is no exception: the process is 100% digital and lets everybody become an investor or request funding for a sustainable project, without going throughthe banks.

There is growing interest in crowdfunding as an alternative way to support projects focused on renewables. This comes at a time when the green energy sector is feeling the purse strings tighten in many European countries.

In 1961, the physicist Rolf Landauer formulated a principle that any transformation of information that takes place in a computer requires energy, thus making zero-power computing a pipe dream.

Only when they are accepted, or better even embraced by the people, they can be implemented swiftly without any  major delays.

A book of learning experiences, in which every chapter is explained through a piece of art. The theme: the transformation of CO 2 into something useful, using man-made diamonds.

Can “cryptocurrencies” encourage green-tech? Nowadays virtual means of payment are in use as an alternative to our existing currencies.

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.

Just because your home was built in the 1950s or 60s doesn’t mean it can’t be green. Retrofitting – the process of modernising properties using the latest technologies – can save energy and reduce CO 2 emissions.

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.

Do young people know what a smart city is? Do they care about saving energy and preserving the Earth’s resources? “Rooting sustainability starts on the benches of schools,” affirmed UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova at the recent UN Climate Change Conference ( COP22 ) in Marrakech, Morocco.

After the Brexit shock in Europe, an intensive debate has started to figure out the future energy strategy of the European Union without the UK.

In the wake of the Brussels bombings, the French blogger Francis Pisani addressed the quandaries of modern, connected European cities facing terrorist threats .

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.

Andre Konstantin Geim is the only person who ever received both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel . He was born in 1958 in Russia, and is a Dutch-British physicist with German, Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian roots.

Householders do not always know how much energy they consume. To help improve their awareness, the EnergyLife app was developed through BeAware , a EU funded project, led by the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), in Finland.

Niklaus Ledergerber, president of the cultural heritage preservation commission of the Swiss canton of Appenzell, is an expert in local building history. He tells youris.

Scientists aim to create a sustainable future for the Strickbau building technique , typical of the Swiss Appenzell region. The challenge is to use modern features respecting historic architecture to bring them back from the verge of extinction.

After working all of his life as a sound technician for the Bulgarian state television, Emil is now retired. He lives in a 120 square meter house in Gorni Lozen, a village not far from Sofia, but only uses its ground floor and basement because he can’t afford to heat the whole of it.

María Regidor co-owns a mini-hydro power plant in Spain, which produces part of the electricity provided to the residents of the Castile and León region.