European cities to collaborate for clean energy

European cities have joined forces to find quicker ways of promoting clean energy and curbing fossil fuels, advancing climate goals made more urgent by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

An EU-backed project is supporting the city’s efforts to replace former industrial centers with new structures and public spaces, introduce renewables and retrofit buildings.

Cities are central to the battle against global warming – they consume two-thirds of global energy and account for more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions.

About three of every four people in Europe live in urban areas. One of the challenges is how to supply them with reliable and affordable climate-friendly energy – especially if it comes from intermittent sources like wind or solar.

Utrecht in the Netherlands is spearheading an EU-funded project that is testing a range of clean-energy possibilities, together with Nice in France and Gothenburg in Sweden.

Utrecht itself is trialing using electric cars to help make the switch to renewable energy.

While the Dutch city is not the first to use such “bi-directional” charging points, it is the first to test them on a district-level scale.

Such points enable electric vehicles to be charged during the day with energy generated from nearby solar panels, and to act as battery storage for that power.

When the cars are parked and plugged in, surplus power from the battery can be fed back into the national grid. This is especially useful in the evenings, when home energy consumption peaks.