Part of the issue with small-scale, home-based renewable energy systems is that initial setup costs can be high. This puts such installations out of reach for some sectors of society, even if they could benefit financial in the long run with lower household bills.

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.

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

The European construction industry and home-builder citizens are increasingly aware of sustainable choices. Some solutions can be more expensive than others, although sometimes this only concerns the construction phase.

All too often, conversations on renewable energy meander toward the same end: green technology is a nice thing, though it has to become economically viable before widespread adoption becomes the norm. ...

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.

In Europe, households are responsible for 32% of greenhouse gas emissions and 42% of energy. Cement production alone contributes to 5% of manmade CO 2 emissions .

To tackle climate change, new buildings are required to consume as little energy as possible . That’s because, in Europe, buildings are responsible for about 40% of our energy consumption.

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.

Reducing the energy requirements of buildings is an absolute priority in Europe. The energy demonstration project SARA has developed several public-access eco-buildings in France, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, UK and Uzbekistan.