A team led by Prof Simon Lux (University of Münster and Fraunhofer Research Institution for Battery Cell Production, Germany) has analysed the future energy demand associated with the EU's goal of strengthening local battery supply chains in Europe. According to their projections, Europe will have to generate significant amounts of energy for local battery cell production.

If AI’s intrinsic risks are real, governmental regulation and ethical frameworks are unlikely to contain them. Drawing on social theory, it highlights myths about the state’s capacity, global enforcement challenges, rapid technological decentralization, and the ambiguity of moral norms. The author presents a skeptical view that “meaning well” does not ensure effective outcomes, cautioning against overreliance on governments and ethics to mitigate advanced AI risks.

Vertical farming offers a much-needed opportunity to secure food production in the face of climate change, but can it truly deliver a sustainable alternative to field-grown crops? A new study led by the University of Surrey has found that while vertical farms dramatically increase lettuce yields and use far less water, the carbon footprint still exceeds traditional lettuce farming – raising important questions about how the UK can balance food security with environmental responsibility. 

Modern ‘sustainable’ innovations in architecture are failing to slow climate change,  but revisiting ancient knowledge and techniques found in traditional architecture could offer better solutions.

As Europe has been struggling with several heatwaves this summer, a new survey from Summer 2024 reveals how much its citizens are willing to support different kinds of climate policies (n=19,328, 24 June–27 August 2024). As expected, Europeans strongly prefer policies which allocate subsidies for rail transport or home insulation for instance, while they strongly oppose the ones which foresee any kind of tax on polluting behaviours, such as the one on cars and meat.

This new survey highlights interesting trends in Europeans citizens’ preferences and opinions about different possible climate policies currently under discussion. These results are now browsable in an online tool which allows the user to analyse and compare opinions about a set of different climate policies in Europe.