In order to foster implementation of waste-related European Directives the state of national implementation among the EU-27 must be analysed and assessed. The project supported the European Commission by analysing the completeness of the national implementation reports for the End-of-life vehicles and the Mining waste Directives. Thus, it contributed to identifying outstanding requirements of the Directives and hence policy action.

During the 2nd VDI conference on biogas Dr. Wolfgang Urban from Ecologic Institute presented technical options for a grid-compatible biogas feed such as conditioning of liquefied natural gas, the formation of heating value districts, computational heating value tracking and additional gas supply. He classified the different options and discussed the economic aspects. The presentation slides are available for download.

The 22st Climate Talk on 25 June 2012 occupies itself with the question: which impetuses for international climate policy will expand out from the Rio+20 Conference? The debate at the event, organized by Ecologic Institute in cooperation with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), was opened by Dr. Karsten Sach (BMU), Dr. Thomas Koenen (BDI), and Daniel Mittler (Greenpeace), who were all fresh back from Rio.

Ecologic Institute leads a multi-year project for the European Commission to design and implement outreach and capacity building activities on emissions trading for developing countries. Activities include ten Summer Universities and training courses carried out on behalf of the International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP) as well as an eLearning and stakeholder information platform.

Industrialized countries have committed themselves to providing USD 100 billion of "new and additional" financing annually by the year 2020 to support developing countries in their efforts to mitigate climate change and adapt to its effects. But what does "new and additional" mean? Where do development projects end and where do climate change measures start? These questions are tackled by Irene Knoke (Südwind Institute) in a study for the European Parliament. Matthias Duwe (Ecologic Institute) provided his expert opinion in a peer review of the paper. The study is available for download.

This video is one out of four that were developed and produced within the project EU sustainable development indicators: video production, co-ordinated by the Ecologic Institute.

EU progress towards sustainable development goes side by side with fostering green growth. Here resource productivity has an important role to play. Yet its measurement could have some interpretation pitfalls and it is important to be aware of them.

EU statistics depict poverty in a particular way, which goes beyond the income issues. At risk-of-poverty-or-social-exclusion indicator is an ample example of it. To understand why, one should know what is the rationale behind it and how important it is, that in the EU poverty and social exclusion go hand in hand.

The EU target to raise the share of biofuels in transport to 10 % by 2020 remains one of the most controversial environmental policy decisions in recent years. In this book chapter written by Timo Kaphengst and Katharina Umpfenbach of Ecologic Institute together with Bernd Hirschl and Anna Neumann, the authors examine the role of scientific evidence and impact assessments in the policy process leading up to the adoption of the Renewable Energy Directive.

The report aims to provide those working to improve senior health in San Mateo County with a wide variety of information on current and projected senior health. To achieve this, it relies on many sources of information, chief among them the San Mateo County Health System, specifically the Aging and Adult Services Division and the Health Policy and Planning Division. Their work is supplemented with statistics from the US Census Bureau, especially the American Community Survey, as well as a broad range of academic and policy studies, geospatial statistics and visualizations.

Statistical measurement of income poverty as a relative concept is very specific to the EU. Yet besides this classical case there are various factors that make us think further about the relative nature of poverty. Some of the examples refer to statistics on how national income is distributed throughout the society, how living expenses differ across the countries as well as rural and urban areas, and how differently Europeans feel about poverty in their cities.

This video deals with the British family "Electron" who use Smart Home technologies for environmental protection reasons. The video illustrates the advantages of Smart Homes including among other features a detailed control over power consumption.