How can industrialised nations, regions and cities mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in various economic sectors? At the international workshop “Decarbonisation – 100 % Renewable Energy and More”, decarbonisation approaches and strategies pursued in Europe on different political levels were showcased, discussed and reviewed with regard to their cross-border transferability. It showcased different examples from across the EU, highlighting specific national and city level strategies and discussed their respective commonalities and differences with an expert audience. The high-level workshop was organized by the German Federal Environment Agency with support of Ecologic Institute.

The European Commission and EU Member States are currently discussing proposals for a new system of governance. The new set of rules and procedures is expected to help the EU to achieve its climate and energy targets for 2030 and to form an Energy Union. One of the reform’s aims is to streamline existing planning and reporting requirements on energy and climate policy. However, much remains to be clarified about how this new governance framework and the new planning and reporting process will work in practice. The studies are available for download.

On 15 September 2015, the POLIMP project consortium will host its final expert workshop at Ecologic Institute in Berlin (Germany). The one day workshop will focus on low-carbon technology support policies in the EU, with special attention given to financing, public acceptance and emissions trading. Each of these will feature introductory input from the project, contrasted with an external policy expert perspective (from research, government and business) to start conversation among participants. The presentations and discussion will be augmented by the perspectives of up to 40 external experts working in research, government and business.

From 1 June to 11 June 2015, the meeting of the Subsidiary Bodies for the UN climate negotiations in the lead up to COP21 took place in Bonn (Germany). Members of the CECILIA2050 consortium hosted a side event entitled "Improving Europe's Climate Policy Toolbox to Reach the 2050 Low-Carbon Targets: Insights from the CECILIA2050 Project."

'BeWater' is a three and a half-year EU-funded project, which investigates the opportunities of preparing adaptive management plans for river basins in four case studies based in the Mediterranean region: Pedieos (Cyprus), Rmel (Tunisia), Tordera (Spain) and Vipava (Slovenia). The aim of the project is to promote dialogue and collaboration between science and society for sustainable water management in order to facilitate adaptation to the impacts of global change in the Mediterranean. From May until July 2015, four participatory workshops were held in the aforementioned cities. Some of the outcomes of the workshops are summarized in the table at the end of the text.

In an effort to increase education on the environmental, health and socioeconomic impacts of unconventional drilling such as fracking, Ecologic Institute and FracTracker Alliance are collaborating through an initiative to share the American fracking experience. As part of this initiative, a compelling series of 14 US-based and international workshops in affected communities has been created. One such workshop was hosted by the South Florida Wildlands Association in partnership with Ecologic Institute and FracTracker to share the latest insights on oil development activities (including seismic testing) in Florida and ways that the public can get involved.

This workshop aimed at discussing the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) trade agreement under negotiation between the European Union and the United States of America with regards to the specific food and agricultural provisions that would be included in the agreement. Issues with regulatory cooperation between the two systems as well as eliminating trade barriers to facilitate the flow of goods across the Atlantic were discussed. Ecologic Institute, US (EIUS) co-hosted the workshop with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on 9 January 2015.

From an environmental perspective, a key question concerning the current revision of the Veterinary Medicinal Products Directive (Directive 2001/82/EC) is its requirements to generate and make public data on the environmental behaviour of veterinary drugs. The latest proposal of the EU Commission contains some minor improvements on the availability of environmental information for generic veterinary products - however, other very significant information gaps are not addressed

The SWITCH-ON workshop brought together developers and end-users of a variety of open data based water information products from all over Europe to test these tools hands-on and to discuss their opportunities and challenges. The goal of the 1.5-day workshop was to identify the potential and operational needs of water-related information tools and services based on open data. SWITCH-ON develops state-of-the-art information products and services for water management and environmental awareness.

In September 2014, Dr. Camilla Bausch and Lena Donat conducted a 2-days training to enhance the negotiation skills of Lebanese negotiators at the international negotiations on climate change. The final workshop report is available for download.

What shape will the future governance framework of European climate and energy policy take? The proposal submitted by the European Commission at the beginning of this year raises more questions than it answers in this regard. Dr. Camilla Bausch and Christine Lucha of the Ecologic Institute invited experts to a workshop to discuss what impact the new EU Governance has on the electricity sector and how to design the requested regional cooperation.