With around 3 000 hours of sunshine a year, Malta is ideally placed to harness the sun’s energy. But its scorching summers, salty sea air and occasional Saharan dust storms also make it one of Europe’s toughest environments for solar panels. For Dr Brian Azzopardi, a renewable energy researcher from Malta, those challenging conditions present
Zdenka Sokolickova, University of Groningen; Christy Hehir, University of Surrey, and Elizabeth Cooper, University of Groningen “You’d see massive glacier calvings, and you’d just want to cry. But all the guests would be cheering. And you’d be like … ‘can you not put two and two together?’” Those are the words of a
Ph. People try to stay cool on the sweltering streets of Manhattan during a heat wave in July 2025. Spencer Platt/Getty Images Kevin T. Smiley, Louisiana State University ; Deepti Singh, Washington State University; Jennifer Marlon, Yale University, and Jim Hurrell, Colorado State University When a devastating heat wave, hurricane, flood or wildfire
Jan Hugo, University of Pretoria; Chrisna du Plessis, University of Pretoria, and Karina Landman Climate change is affecting cities more and more. This creates major challenges, but it also gives fast-growing cities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the chance to adapt to global warming in new and better ways. Cities rely on roads, pipes
Adrino Mazenda, University of Pretoriaù Climate change discussions in southern Africa often focus on farming, where the effects of environmental shocks are most visible. The debate frequently centres on droughts, floods, declining crop productivity and heat stress affecting livestock systems. This is largely because agriculture is a sector that’s directly exposed to extreme
Along a small stream in Spain, groups of teenagers are at work. One hovers around a black tarpaulin covered in wet pieces of plastic. Another stands on a small bridge, fishing with a net. Others sort small pieces of plastic, cigarette butts and various other things they’ve recovered from the stream. What looks
Hybrid cars are a regular sight on European roads today. Sitting between internal combustion engines and fully electric vehicles, they run on fuel for some of the journey and electricity for the rest. That concept might be about to shake up the aviation industry. Aviation accounts for around 2.5% of global carbon emissions,
In the village of Suonenjoki, the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) stands surrounded by a forest of pine trees. The local soils are not fertile and pine is pretty much the only species that can grow there. But in a nursery on campus, where young trees are grown from seed before being planted,
In September 2026, naval architect Thomas Koch is bringing his firm’s virtual shipyard to a maritime trade fair in Hamburg, Germany. The virtual shipyard is a digital replica that tracks shipbuilding progress in real time and can suggest improvements that save money and energy. Such tools are badly needed as European shipbuilding struggles to keep up with
What if schools could do more than teach sustainability? What if they could test it, measure it and experience it in real time? Across Europe, students and teachers have been turning classrooms into small-scale laboratories for environmental change. Over the past four years, schools and universities in Finland, Portugal, Romania and Spain trialled more