Ecology

The Agribusiness Atlas 2026 sheds light on the market power of large corporations, from seeds to supermarkets, and shows how politicians and citizens can limit this power – for an environmentally friendly, socially just and sustainable diet. Launching on 30 September 2026. Save the date!

The European Commission’s Electrification Action Plan and a dedicated Heating & Cooling Strategy must help removing the many political and financial hurdles to renewable heating. Citizens in the EU still depend largely on fossil gas and other fossil fuels to keep their homes warm. After the massive increase of fossil gas prices in 2022, another global fossil fuel price crisis unfolds. There are clean and affordable domestic alternatives for heating, such as solar thermal energy, sustainable bioenergy and geothermal and ambient energy. Using renewable electricity for heating is the solution for cutting both emissions and households’ energy bills. The electric heat pump is the key technology, using electricity to pump up the temperature level of ambient or geothermal heat.

Too often, Europe's story gets told through crisis and decline. We pushed back. Our 'Facts over fatalism' social media campaign cut through the noise with hard numbers, inconvenient truths, and reasons to take Europe seriously on climate, defence, democracy, and the economy. Swipe through our different posts, share what hits, and keep the facts front and centre.

The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), with the support of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue, selected 8 young climate leaders to join CEPS' annual flagship event, Ideas Lab, in Brussels on 2 and 3 March 2026.

This Böll EU Brief critically assesses the prospects of small modular reactors (SMRs) in Europe. It finds that most SMR designs remain in early development, lack regulatory approval in the EU, and are unlikely to deliver electricity at scale before 2050. Technical, economic and political challenges – including high costs, unresolved waste management, proliferation risks and heterogeneous designs – undermine claims of rapid deployment and cost reductions. The authors conclude that prioritising renewables, storage and electrification is a more credible pathway for timely decarbonisation.

The new US shift on monetary and climate policy has created a rare opening for Europe. With strong green finance rules and the European Central Bank integrating climate risks, the EU can position the euro as the world’s leading green currency. This Böll EU Brief outlines how ‘green internationalisation’ could boost Europe’s strategic power.

With the Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF), the European Union defines its long-term budget – and with it, its political priorities for the years to come. In July 2025, the European Commission published its proposal for the MFF 2028-2034, and long and protracted negotiations will follow. Policy makers now have the opportunity to scale up ambi­tion and deliver on climate, social, economic and security objectives. With this web dossier, we want to give an overview over the different topics EU policy makers will need to address, and give space for commentary and analysis on the MFF.

Our energy networks materialise the EU’s power of cross-border cooperation. Thanks to a well-connected grid, affordable electricity flows across the continent to households and businesses. And despite the Iberian blackout of 28 April 2025, outages remain extremely seldom and limited in time in within the EU. With the rise of a renewable, more decentralised energy system, Europe’s energy infrastructure also needs to adapt. The EU Action Plan for Grids and the EU Grids Package try to tackle the huge technical, administrative and financial bottlenecks that risk delaying the growth of wind and solar power. How can policymakers and industry advance the update of our grids? Could this task become the laboratory for a deeper integration of energy policies, evolving into a truly European Energy Infrastructure Union?