Author: Anthony King

In the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping of oil and gas has been disrupted by the conflict in Iran. This also exposed a less obvious vulnerability hidden in the global trade in critical raw materials that are essential to modern technologies. Take synthetic graphite, an important material for lithium-ion batteries, made from a carbon-rich by-product […]

A biorefinery in Spain is turning household organic waste and sewage sludge into coatings, fertilisers and biodegradable bags. In the Netherlands, a company is producing a plant-based chemical building block for new bottles, films and fibres. Together, they show how Europe is exploring ways to rely less on fossil raw materials, an approach that could […]

In cities, air pollution can vary sharply from one street to the next. Fumes may linger between tall buildings, collect at busy junctions or drift towards a school gate. However, cities often lack the detailed forecasts needed to act before levels become dangerous. For Professor Soledad Le Clainche, an applied mathematician at the Technical University […]

Around 150 000 animals, mostly rats and mice, are used in the EU each year to test the safety of everyday chemicals, but that is starting to change. Animal welfare campaigners have long raised concerns about this practice, and questions remain over how well results from animals translate to humans. Researchers have therefore set out […]

Electric motors are the largely unseen workhorses of modern life. They power everything from washing machines to factory equipment. Individually, many are already highly efficient. But because there are billions of them, even small improvements could translate into significant energy savings. When Spanish scientist Dr María Teresa Pérez Prado found out just how much of […]

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 rivals. Many […]

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 than 60 […]

Mandy Fransz was working a nine‑to‑five office job in Dublin for a big American tech firm when she made a life‑changing switch. In 2018, the Dutch tech worker quit her office job to try remote work in search of a better quality of life. She travelled to Bali, southeast Asia, for a month as a […]

Visitors to Utrecht’s Wilhelmina Park in the summer of 2023 may have come across an unusual sight: volunteers on stationary exercise bikes, cycling for science. The bikes were set up in different parts of the park – in its centre, beside a busy road and at a traffic junction where cars constantly stopped and started. […]