People love tomatoes so much that they are now the most important vegetable crop worldwide. But as world temperatures rise, the risk of losing this vital source of food has become very real. The EU-funded TomGEM project has identified new varieties with better heat tolerance to ensure citizens can continue to enjoy all the tasty tomato-based foods they adore for a very long time still to come.
Heavy industry is often associated with giant chimneys releasing large quantities of dense, polluting smoke. The EU-funded CLEANKER project has developed new CO2 capture technology for cement plants, challenging this age-old industrial perception. Their technology will boost the EU’s plans for a greener economy that will ultimately benefit all citizens, wherever they live.
The steel industry is one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. To change this, the EU and industry-funded H2Future project is showing how a steel production plant can operate using green hydrogen made from renewable electricity. Once finalised, this new technology could play a key role in helping Europe meet its goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2050.
Science has long held that in the food chain, plants support animals. While this may be true on land, the EU-funded MixITiN project has shown that such a system isn’t applicable to our oceans. The project hopes that its findings will help to improve knowledge and thus broader education efforts on marine ecology, allowing citizens to gain a better understanding of the ocean’s great wonders.
IT solutions/tools can make urban services more efficient, sustainable and user-friendly. The citizens from these areas would need to fully understand how these tools work, and what the benefits are to profit from them. An ambitious EU-funded project has sought to achieve this by developing citizen-focused tools and supporting the next generation of smart city innovators.
There are many factors that can influence a building's energy performance that a simulation cannot take into account. This is why one EU-funded project has gathered experience-based input from other building and energy stakeholders on what worked - and what didn't. The result is enbuibench, a platform where users can compare a building's energy use against other buildings with similar characteristics.
Crowded cities aren't exactly optimal environments for plants to thrive. However, a team of EU-funded researchers is using robotics to help plants automatically grow into the unnatural shapes, sizes, and configurations that urban environments demand. As a result, cities could soon benefit from a robust green infrastructure used for everything from food production to climate control.
For years, environmental scientists across different disciplines have struggled with the same technical challenges. In response, EU-funded researchers have created a community where scientists can pool their resources to find joint solutions to common problems.
The EU project CD-LINKS has helped to join the dots between climate change mitigation and sustainable development policies by creating a network of research experts in a wide range of relevant topics across the globe.
EU-funded researchers have designed a standard instrument module to monitor conditions in the deep sea. As part of a Europe-wide marine-sensing infrastructure, the modules will supply reliable long-term data on the state of our seas and oceans.
