News and events published on the EcoAP Community Platform

• New discussion topic on Environmental policy and regulation: Energy efficiency: can additional health benefits be measured? Incentivised?
• Book Review: "Eco-Cities and the Transition to Low Carbon Economies"
• France launches two calls for projects on air conditioning and refrigeration
• New Climate Economy Report: Greener cities could save €15 trillion worldwide

The SPIRE partnership (Sustainable Process Industry through Resource and Energy Efficiency) is a cross-sectoral initiative involving the main players in the European Union's process industries – eight sectors that transform commodity resources into essential products: chemicals, steel, engineering, minerals, non-ferrous metals, cement, ceramics and water. In 2013, SPIRE was designated by the European Commission as a public-private partnership of strategic importance for European industry. Through dedicated Horizon 2020 calls, SPIRE partners can participate in research and innovation projects, with the objective of making the process industry more resource- and energy-efficient. SPIRE executive director Loredana Ghinea provided an update on the progress of the initiative.

Wave energy seems to be the little brother of other renewable energy technologies. While solar and wind power have been commercialised and scaled up to the extent that some countries now get a substantial portion of their electricity from them (wind energy met more than 40% of Denmark's electricity needs in the first half of 2014, for example), wave power remains at the experimental stage. Prototypes are being developed, but commercial-scale exploitation is still a long way off.

The European Union's newest member state, Croatia, is at the start of its journey to develop and implement the policies and support measures that will boost eco-innovation. There is so far no targeted eco-innovation policy, but work is underway to build capacity and gain experience. Croatian partners have, for example, led or participated in eco-innovation projects funded by the EU's Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), which ran from 2007-2013.