UN declares 2014-2024 as the Decade for the Sustainable Energy for All

United Nations (UN) has declared unanimously the decade 2014-2024 as the Decade for the Sustainable Energy for All, underlying the importance of the renewable energy for a sustainable development of all the people of the world. This resolution reaffirms the…

What is a Smart Grid?

A Smart Grid is an efficient way of managing the electricity. The term appeared first in 1998 but started to be more commonly used in 2003. A Smart Grid uses information and communications technologies applied to the electrical grid to collect data…

The early history of tidal energy projects

The idea of using the energy of the tides is not new. Tidal mills were built in France, Spain and Portugal as early as the twelfth century. A mill powered partially by tidal energy was built at Port-Royal, Nova Scotia,…

High performance buildings through the SUPERBUILDING Project

The SUPERBUILDINGS project, co-founded by the EU, is a research project formed by a large european consortium aiming to develop a set of indicators and a benchmarking process in order to standardise assessments of building performance in terms of sustainability. The project…

The sustainable example of the city of Güssing

Güssing is a village with 4.000 inhabitants, located in the border with Hungary, in the poorest region of Austria. In 1995 the mayor decided to reduce the costs and he developed a plan, together with his colleague, an engineer specialised in…

What is marine current power?

Marine current power is a form of marine energy that can be obtained from very different origins such as wind, tides, difference in density, salinity gradients (osmotic power) or temperature (OTEC). Independently of the origin of the currents, they all…