Imagine visiting a hi-tech museum and being guided by an AI robot. No, you are not experiencing a remake of the “2001.

The ongoing energy crisis, which started in summer 2021 due to low natural gas supply and which further deteriorated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has highlighted the urgent need for a more independent European energy policy .

In the city, the famous Cabanyal district which had been home to a local fishing community for a long time, has recently been transformed into a testing ground for numerous energy efficiency techniques.

In his song ‘ Concrete Jungle ’, the reggae legend Bob Marley sang wistfully about being trapped in a dense and oppressive urban environment ‘where the living is hardest’, all the while longing for the ‘sweet life’.

What do cucumber, almonds, onions and avocados have in common? Besides being potential ingredients for your next salad, all those plants need pollinators to reproduce : animals that move pollen from the male part of the flower to the female one.

Would you enjoy a city full of parks, where streets were tree-lined, where cycling and walking were pleasant, a city with grass-insulated roofs on houses and public buildings to keep you warm in winter? According to a Eurobarometer study , there is an 84 per cent chance that your answer is yes.

Today´s liberalised markets are focused on short-term return on capital, but energy infrastructure planning should be driven by the objective of climate protection.

Door locks that open with fingerprints, networked security cameras, smart light bulbs, smart washing machines: technology is transforming our homes, turning the tech dreams of yesterday into the reality of today.

Local governments in Europe are notoriously risk averse, city council officials and industry leaders won’t hesitate to tell you.

Home sweet home. Houses are supposed to be our nest, a shelter from the world outside. But how healthy are European homes? Nowadays most of our time is spent indoors, often at home, one reason being the current shift to “desk jobs”.

As air pollution is largely considered to be an outdoor problem, people are little aware of indoor contaminants . The World Health Organisation estimated that each year 4.3 million people die of exposure to household pollutants.

When Justin Bieber made his way to Stockholm in September 2016, city officials hardly expected the tween heartthrob to pave the way for sustainable urban policy .

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.

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.

Cooling and heating public buildings remains an expensive and a mostly unresolved issue in Europe. According to the not-for-profit think-tank Buildings Performance Institute Europe , Spain has about 11.

Making a city or district energy smart is, first and foremost, an exercise in good planning . However, such green planning tools are still in their infancy. The trouble is that every city is different, every district unique.

Cities have started to join forces to become more energy efficient . This trends stems from the findings of the first climate assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 1990, which was quite alarming.

The Cuarto de Marzo district of Valladolid, Spain , is an area spreading over 21,000 square metres with 166 residences. It is now the focus of a retrofitting project , called  R2CITIES , funded by the EU.