All too often, waste ends up in landfill or is incinerated. The EU-funded DAFIA project sought to address this by exploring ways of converting waste into ingredients to make high-end products. Recovering valuable compounds from waste streams is helping the EU transition away from fossil fuels, benefitting industry, the environment and citizens.
Certain plastic materials can be incredibly difficult to recycle. The EU-funded MultiCycle project has developed a pilot plant that can recycle complex plastic materials. This helps the EU move towards a circular economy, allowing citizens to benefit from plastics in an environmentally friendly way.
Whilst being a renewable energy, hydropower has a rather large environmental footprint. From its dams causing flooding to its power plants threatening fish populations, the key to the wider use of hydropower is to make it more sustainable. Thanks to new cost-effective measures developed by the EU-funded FIThydro project, environmentally friendly, sustainable hydropower may soon be a reality.
Environmental justice is about making sure environmental laws, regulations and policies treat everyone fairly. The EU-funded EnvJustice project has developed an online tool to support the many environmental justice movements happening around the world. As a result, everyone now has easy access to up-to-date information about how environmental issues impact their part of the world.
Today’s silicon-based solar cells are limited in that they can only absorb energy from a single band of light. That’s why the EU-funded PERTPV project is using perovskite-based materials to build a new type of solar cell. This should lead to more powerful, efficient and sustainable solar panels that will benefit citizens as much as the planet.
While cement and lime are essential to modern life, unfortunately the manufacturing process unavoidably releases large amounts of CO2. The EU-funded LEILAC project has been developing cutting-edge technology to efficiently capture these emissions at a low cost. This will help to decarbonise a critically important industrial sector and contribute towards cleaner air for all citizens to enjoy.
The diesel ferries used to transport people and vehicles from point A to point B produce a lot of air pollution. But a new all-electric, pollution-free car ferry designed by the EU-funded E-ferry project has proven capable of effectively replacing these diesel models. As a result, passengers across Europe could soon be commuting via sustainable, quiet, and smog-free electric ferries.
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.
Methanol has been touted as a potential climate-friendly ‘fuel of the future’ since the late 1980s, but its use in the transport sector remains limited. The possibility of generating it from CO2 has recently rekindled interest. An EU-funded project explored this option to decarbonise the steel industry and power cargo ships that would benefit both the environment and, subsequently, citizens.
A great deal of biodiversity, accounting for an enormous variety of plants, amongst other forms of life, is found on the forest floor but this is often overlooked in forest management strategies. An EU-funded project developed an online tool to accurately take account of biodiversity loss at this level. This will help to conserve forests for future generations of EU citizens.
