There are three ways a crowdfunding project can be financed. Lending: the entrepreneurs borrow money and pay interest; equity: investors in the project become its shareholders; donations: no reward is to be expected (there is a fourth way, a mix of equity and lending called “hybrid”).

They live in a 1970s building complex bundling where they all have to share the energy costs of their significantly inefficient building. These running costs are unreasonable and have been known to reach five times the rent level.

When you see a beautiful shirt on a fashion model or in a shop window, you ask yourself: shall I buy it? Can I afford it? But before deciding, there is another question to be answered : How much damage ...

Living or working in high energy-efficient buildings can be a great opportunity but users need to feel empowered. This means making them aware of the building features and allowing them to manage some of the appliances by themselves.

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.

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.

In the late 1980s, the German-born chemist Michael Grätzel literally tied his name to an invention that is hailed as a  revolution in renewable energy .

To date, European consumers pay more for energy from renewables than for energy from conventional resources. One of the reasons is still the immaturity of the technology used for harnessing and distributing renewable energy.

Bioenergy represents two-thirds of the energy produced from renewable sources in Europe, though biomass sustainability is not taken for granted.

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.

San Pietro is a peripheral neighbourhood overlooking the city of Genoa, North-West of Italy. It is also known as Lavatrici (washing machines), because of the concrete slabs with empty circles that characterise the façades of its buildings.

The European grid already faces transmission challenges, as the alternative current (AC) infrastructure has almost reached its transport capacity.

Innovative technologies can be used to retrofit old buildings as a means to save energy. This is precisely what the Bricker project is aiming to achieve.

Retrofitting existing buildings with adequate cutting-edge technologies is thought to guarantees spectacular energy savings, by about 50%. The objective of the EU funded project BRICKER is precisely to demonstrate such possibility.

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.

One of the  biggest challenges of retrofitting projects  is to make them attractive to residents. Now, one of them, the EU-funded project R2CITIES,  is analysing the initial first feedback received from residents  of the  Cuatro de Marzo  district.

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.

Cuatro de Marzo is a district in the southern part of the Spanish city of Valladolid. It is a dense residential area with 190 privately-owned dwellings, developed in 1955.

Cities substantially contribute to European air pollution as they are the source of about 36% of the total CO 2 emissions. Modern cities therefore raise sustainability concerns.

Imagine a city could halve its energy consumption, costs and greenhouse gas emissions. This would get closer to levels that would ensure sustainability of resources.