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.

Forming attitudes is hard. It may be exciting to start a new habit, but it’s challenging to make it stick. This may often happen when we try to go green, consume less energy and constantly follow virtuous behaviours in the buildings where we live and work.

Understanding how people decide to use less energy at home or at work is crucial to boost virtuous behaviours. Our reaction to any novelty is so complex that a lot of socio-psychological research has been done to try to make it more predictable.

The notion of “smart city” has grown in popularity during the last twenty years. Digital revolution fans believe that communication technologies will radically transform our cities, offering a vast range of new services that will simplify our daily life.

As one of her final acts as Prime Minister, Theresa May , announced that she will be signing into law a pledge to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 . This would make Britain the first member of the G7 to make such a commitment official.

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.

A new research conducted by world leading emissions experts is painting a rather gloomy picture. Due to stronger economic growth, global greenhouse gas emissions have hit a new record high of 37 billion tonnes of dioxide in 2017.

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.

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

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.

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.

Fittingly, for an author who argues that connectivity is the key driver of growth in the modern age, Parag Khanna seems to have ties all over the world, and roots in many of the largest urban centres. ...

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.

Efforts to make buildings environmentally sustainable often focus on the technical side, such as energy efficiency. But there is more to sustainability than just energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency has become a key objective in the current context of increasing energy demand, decreasing resources and global warming. Key to efficient energy savings, however, are users' awareness and behaviour.

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.