Pieces of food disappearing into a bin with every wrong answer and neighbours crafting recipes together with vegetables from their “edible district”. Where dry statistics fail, fun and emotions prove powerful tools for raising awareness about food waste and food sharing. Challenges remain, but experts agree: “Serious games have enormous potential to mobilise and engage communities in environmental education”.

Bio-based fertilisers offer a new alternative to more environmentally-impacting products. However, production costs and an outdated regulatory system stand in the way of this new technology. An EU consortium is now looking for solutions.

About 47 million EU citizens can’t afford to heat their homes, with high material costs and poor financing options blocking renovations. But the impact of energy efficiency goes beyond just savings. “Public support for housing upgrades is vital to European democracy,” experts warn. “Without it, we risk losing key parts of the social fabric.”

Struggling to keep pace with the growing share of renewables, the grid is turning into a bottleneck in the energy transition. From DC integration to hybrid microgrids, how emerging technologies are tackling the infrastructure challenge

Pope Francis called them “new expressions of integral citizenship and democracy,” and experts agree on their social, environmental, and economic value. Yet, from integration into the power system to market reliability, energy communities still face significant challenges. “Let’s take urgent action, or we will miss out on their potential,” warn operators.