The annual World water day founded in 1993 by the United Nations General Assembly on March 22, reminds us of the importance of preserving this precious source of life.

Fighting climate change is the challenge of the century. The last UN Environment Emissions Gap Report warned that, in order to ensure global warming stays below 2°C, efforts should be tripled , and if we want to stay below 1.

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is a major part of the fourth industrial revolution and it will transform the construction sector, according to Zoubeir Lafhaj , an expert in the future of construction, from the graduate engineering school École Centrale de Lille, in France.

Greenhouse gases decreased by 23% between 1990 and 2016, said the third report on the state of the “Energy Union”, which tracks the EU's transition to a low-carbon society.

What makes it possible to call a friend with a different cell phone provider or withdraw money securely from another bank's cashpoint? The answer is "interoperability" which refers to the capability of two or more networks, systems, devices, applications, or components to share information.

Remember the cassette Walkman? With streaming services, even MP3 players like the iPod look distinctly  passé . Car Sat-Navs used to drop jaws in amazement, but now driverless cars and flying drone taxis are on the horizon.

In about half of the EU countries, more than 20% of clean drinking water is lost in the distribution network before it reaches consumers’ taps, and in some countries the proportion is as high as 60%, stated a report by the European Commission.

Just imagine: you get back home one evening, unlocking your door with the torch light of your mobile. You sit down on your sofa, download a film 100 times faster than currently possible and enjoy the movie on a fully secure wireless connection.

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

Both European and Asian experts are focusing on the challenging tasks of system integration and transmission of renewable energy over long distances. High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) grid technologies could be the solution.

Smart society is one of these complex but promising concepts that remain poorly understood. This futuristic language sounds like a science fiction, but smarter societies are already slowly emerging all around us.

A wind of change is blowing across Europe, trying to sweep away all the plastic bags that are littering our countries. January 2018 has been a busy month in this sense.

Crowdfunding is considered by some experts to have the same effect on banks as Uber has on taxis. Green energy crowdfunding is no exception: the process is 100% digital and lets everybody become an investor or request funding for a sustainable project, without going throughthe banks.

A relatively recent interest in hemp as a building material responds to a global trend that encourages the development of bio-based products and the reduction of carbon emissions.

One of the main contributors of CO 2 emissions are the homes we live in. In the EU, buildings are responsible for 36% of CO 2 emissions and 40% of energy consumption.

Thousands of kilometres of increasingly sophisticated and cutting-edge transmission lines, in other words supergrids , are on the EU agenda. Projects for high voltage links between countries are already being implemented.

Food keeps us fueled up and healthy, but it’s also about culture and tradition.

Solar parks proliferate in Europe and boost development of renewables, but the issue of land use is often raised. A new trend is to produce energy and cultivate crops at the same time , in other words use agrivoltaic systems.

Exascale supercomputing refers to super fast computers to be implemented between 2018 and 2020 to analyse massive volumes of data. The downside: they consume vast amounts of energy.

More than the 70 percent of the protein sources required by animals bred in the European Union are imported from non-EU countries . Soybean dominates the protein supply for animal feed .