You might have watched “The Truman Show”, been excited by space missions, and replaced your bed light without noticing it, but the movie with Jim Carrey, Apollo 13, and lightbulbs all have something in common with circularity.

“ At the end of last year, we were so overwhelmed that we had to start rejecting new membership demands .” Dirk Vansintjan is a board member of EcoPower , a Belgian renewable energy cooperative, founded in 1991.

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 .

The world of online digital media marches forward relentlessly, but many of us still prefer the feel and enjoyment of a good book in our hands, or a newspaper to while away a quiet moment.

In architecture, there are two kinds of sustainability: one simpler, smaller, and ethical in its relationship with the environment and with people; and another which is “fashionable”, used as a label in a speculative way, without an understanding of what it really means.

Santa Casa da Misericordia de Serpa is a well-established Portuguese social institution that runs hospitals, nursing homes and housing projects for elderly.

Francesco is an Italian lawyer. He lives in Rome and is now about to move into a new apartment. “It’s a way to get closer to my office,” he says. “I don’t have a car, I just ride bicycle.

Wind and solar energy is not constant and therefore a renewables-based society requires smart grids to transport this power from areas where electricity generation is currently high to those where it is low in order to meet demand.

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

Often in the countryside, but also near cities, we come across electric power lines with huge pylons, real eye-sores on the landscape.

In the past, most electricity grids were mainly based on centrally produced power, in relatively few plants, within national borders.

Households and small businesses using independent power systems, or microgrids, still find it hard to cope without their national electricity grids.

Over the last few decades the energy landscape has been changing drastically in Europe. An increasing amount of electricity is now generated from renewable sources, such as solar and wind energy.

February’s blackout in Brussels left neighbourhoods in darkness, streets lit only by headlights and torches. You may be left thinking it was the symptom of a sick system.

The 43-story Strata tower in London was one of the first buildings in the world to incorporate wind turbines into its structure. It has three small turbines – each with a rated capacity of 19 kilowatt hours – built into its roof.

Recent studies suggest that around 70 to 80 percent of people in Europe support wind farms, although there are still concerns around noise and aesthetics.

United Kingdom - London Array With a peak rated power of 630 megawatts, London Array is the largest wind farm in Europe by capacity, and also the largest offshore plant in the world.

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.

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.