REPowerEU Plan to reduce Russian dependency

 The European Commission is working on their REPowerEU plan, an ambitious roadmap to reduce Russian fossil fuel dependency by two-thirds in this year to attempt to stop the price shocks that are threatening European families and businesses. In the next few years the plan seeks to eliminate dependence on Russian fossil fuels entirely well before 2030. The REPowerEU plan’s target is to install 10 million heat pumps over the next five years is a really modest but achievable, looking at the increase over recent sales trends. In 2020, approximately 1.8 million EU households purchased a heat pump and are set to install many more in 2022.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Climate change has happened.

Image
  Philip and Paul discuss the IPCC 2022 Report on Climate Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Climate change has happened What does the report say? The warnings make for grim reading. 3.5 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate impacts and half the world’s population suffers severe water shortages at some point each year. One in three people are exposed to deadly heat stress, and this is projected to increase to 50% to 75% by the end of the century. Half a million more people are at risk of serious flooding every year, and a billion living on coasts will be exposed by 2050. Rising temperatures and rainfall are increasing the spread of diseases in people, such as dengue fever, and in crops, livestock and wildlife. Even if the world keeps heating below 1.6C by 2100 – and we are already at 1.1C – then 8% of today’s farmland will become climatically unsuitable, just after the global population has peaked above 9 billion. Severe stunting could affect 1 million children in ...
Read more

Spider webs near roads capture all types of Micro plastics and could be used for monitoring pollution

Image
Researchers at the University of Oldenburg have been examining spider webs webs for the smallest plastic particles – on inner-city streets with varying levels of traffic. They found mainly the plastic PET, presumably from textiles, as well as particles from the abrasion of car tyres and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The amounts of plastic particles found depended on the location. Spider webs, the team concludes, are a simple and inexpensive means of monitoring air pollution by microplastics in the city and identifying particularly polluted areas.  The samples, collected in a mid-sized German city, were processed with  Fentons  reagent and measured using pyrolysis-gas chromatography–mass spectrometry for specific, polymer related indicator compounds. All samples contained    microplastics (MP) including tyre wear particles (TWP) contamination in air samples.  All the spider webs were contaminated with microplastics. In some cases, the plastic content even accoun...
Read more

Most chemicals detected in food packaging materials are not listed for use

Image
 What harmful substances are in food packaging? Most chemicals detected in food contact materials are not listed for use.  Food packaging is important for today’s globalized food system, but food contact materials (FCMs) can also be a source of hazardous chemicals migrating into foodstuffs. Assessing the impacts of FCMs on human health requires a comprehensive identification of the chemicals they contain, the food contact chemicals (FCCs). Researchers at  the University of Basel  systematically compiled a“database on migrating and extractable food contact chemicals” (FCCmigex) using information from 1210 studies. They found that to date 2881 FCCs have been detected, in a total of six FCM groups (Plastics, Paper & Board, Metal, Multi-materials, Glass & Ceramic, and Other FCMs). 65% of these detected FCCs were previously not known to be used in FCMs. Conversely, of the more than 12’000 FCCs known to be used, only 1013 are included in the FCCmigex database. Plas...
Read more