The fifth monitoring report on Sustainable Development in the European Union was published by Eurostat last week. This biennialal report gives insights into the actions taken so far by the European Union (EU) to achieve the objectives of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy and their impact, based on a number of sustainable development indicators.
High-grade global deposits of coal, oil, gas and other minerals are declining to levels where extraction costs will increase dramatically, says Ugo Bardi, energy expert in a new Report to the Club of Rome.
European Commission has launched the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials, bringing together Member States and other stakeholders to help make Europe a world leader in raw materials exploration, extraction, processing, recycling and substitution by 2020. To this end, the Commission proposes concrete targets to be achieved by 2020 to reduce Europe's dependency on imported raw materials, to replace rare materials with substitutes and to set up innovative pilot actions, e.g. pilot plants for exploration, mining, processing, collecting and recycling.