As the world relies more on renewable energy to limit climate change, an EU-funded project has produced insights into how nanotechnology could support cleaner power and promoted university-business links for targeted future innovation in this field.
Climate services can contribute substantially to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, this market is still under development. Now EU-funded research is tackling the barriers restricting growth in these vital services.
The EU-funded ANTARES project is developing smart sensor and big data technologies that will help farmers produce more with fewer inputs and put Europe at the vanguard of the digital revolution in agriculture.
The EU generates more than 600 million tonnes of plant-based waste every year, containing valuable compounds that could be used to produce chemicals which are currently derived from oil. EU-funded researchers have now designed a safe soil bacterium that could convert waste into useful products in a single step.
Currently, there is a large, untapped market for climate services with gaps in the demand and supply. An EU-funded project is providing insight into the climate service market - reducing barriers for business and encouraging European market growth.
All-too-often it takes global disasters or looming events to bring countries together for a common cause. Climate change is perhaps the biggest 'event' of this kind, an existential threat driving international research cooperation in a new sustainable solution called solar-thermal electricity (STE). But it takes leadership to forge such a grand alliance of scientists, engineers, technicians and companies prepared to back progress in this field. Europe stood up when it was needed.
As climate change worsens, natural disasters like forest fires are becoming more destructive. Firefighters and other emergency service providers often feel outmatched. An EU-funded project is helping these first responders improve their coordination and equipment to keep Europeans safe.
A transparent system for monitoring and reporting CO2 emissions is needed to support climate-change mitigation goals. To this end, an EU-funded project is combining satellite and ground-based data with Earth system modelling to provide detailed information about worldwide anthropogenic CO2 emissions and their evolution over time.
Methane has a global warming impact 25 times higher than that of carbon dioxide and is the world's second most emitted greenhouse gas. An EU-funded project is developing new strains of microorganisms that can transform methane into useful and bio-friendly materials.
Scientists are focusing on technologies for storing heat as a means of increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix. As part of this push, an EU-funded project is testing new materials that perform well at very high temperatures.
