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

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.

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.

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 .