To achieve the EU's goals, we need to rethink mobility from the ground up. This involves many aspects, including electric mobility, walking, cycling and public transport. The second episode of the "Green Deal – Big Deal?" podcast examines the challenges and issues that the mobility transformation needs to address, including environmental problems like climate change and air pollution.

The publication summarizes the key messages from all 20 joint research projects and the seven cross-cutting topics of the German research focus "Plastics in the Environment". Structured by main topics, the central results are presented in order to derive recommendations for various addressees. More than 70 researchers and practitioners from across the research focus have jointly co-authored the key messages.

This study analysed if and how EU Member States used their auctioning revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for climate action. For this purpose, we selected eight case study countries, namely Czech, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal. As part of these case studies, we examined the reporting, the legal provisions and the political narrative around auctioning revenues through desk research and expert interviews.

This report takes stock of emission trajectories, climate policies and complementary policies in G7 countries. It helps to identify gaps in the existing policy landscape of global decarbonisation efforts and proposes potential improvements. Based on these insights, we consider that G7 countries have many viable options for accelerating the global energy transition.

The EU has set out to become the world's first climate-neutral continent, but how are its regions progressing towards this goal? A new report commissioned by the European Parliament assesses this question. It discusses how progress towards net-zero can be measured on regional level and identifies common barriers facing regional governments. The study is based on six case studies from EU regions that have successfully begun the journey towards net neutrality. For the report, Ecologic Institute provided conceptual input on how to define climate neutrality and on how to gauge regions' progress towards it. In addition, the team carried out the case study on industry decarbonisation in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

This infographic illustrates the total global mitigation potential of different types of Nature-based Solutions, shown by ecosystem. The scale of the total potential varies significantly for different ecosystems, i.a. because the total global area of the ecosystems is different.

This paper presents the results of a rapid review of the literature on gender and coastal climate adaptation conducted for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report (AR6). The findings highlight the lack of data on gender as a social dimension of adaptation and the gaps in current indicators for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goal for gender (SDG5). The paper emphasises the need for gender-disaggregated data on coastal adaptation efforts to fully capture both positive and negative gender dimensions of climate adaptation.

This final report assesses the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) provisions of the SUP-Directive with a view to its implementation in the Member States. The focus of this analysis lays on those aspects that represent novelties as compared to other EU legislation on EPR, and thus raise legal questions that have not been addressed before, especially regarding the cleaning up of litter from relevant SUP products.

The central objective of the work presented in this report was to assess the European Commission's Strategic Long-Term Vision and supplementary materials and reflect on them in light of state-of-the-art sector analyses.

This article emphasizes the significant role of culture in shaping and utilizing climate services, which are crucial for achieving climate resilience and sustainable development in various regions. By incorporating cultural perspectives, the development of climate services can be tailored to meet the specific needs and values of local communities, enhancing their effectiveness and relevance.

The German Federal Constitutional Court's decision of March 2021 declared the Climate Change Act partially unconstitutional because it did not sufficiently protect fundamental rights. While the Court upheld the Act's objective of climate neutrality by 2050 and emission budgets until 2030, it held that the Climate Change Act violated fundamental rights for the time after 2030: The specific emissions budgets until 2030 entailed that strict measures would likely be required after 2030 in order to achieve climate neutrality. The Climate Change Act failed to sufficiently address in advance how this would affect individual freedoms. Dr. Ralph Bodle and Dr. Stephan Sina provide an overview of the main findings of the decision as well as the ensuing amendments to the Climate Change Act, which were passed within just a few months after the decision and are subject to new constitutional challenges.

In the first episode of the Green Deal – Big Deal? podcast we unpack the European Green Deal and discuss its importance with our guests Dr Hans Bruyninckx (European Environment Agency) and Dr Åsa Persson (Stockholm Environment Institute).

The UNITED project report "Business Analysis of UNITED Pilots" provides a detailed business analysis of the various pilot projects. This analysis includes an assessment of the economic viability, SWOT and PESTEL analyses as well as a review of the financial aspects of the projects. The aim of the report is to assess the financial attractiveness and feasibility of multi-use concepts in European marine areas, with a particular focus on the synergies and challenges arising from the combination of different maritime activities.

On 21 May 2022, the Ocean Literacy Festival hosted numerous activities organised by the EU4Ocean Coalition members. The festival connected ocean literacy actors from Europe, and showcased the wide diversity of ocean literacy initiatives already in place. Ecologic Institute developed a social media video trailer to give the festival more visibility.