Team Europe consists of the European Union, EU Member States — including their implementing agencies and public development banks — as well as the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Team Europe was initially put in place to ensure a co-ordinated and comprehensive response between the EU and its Member States to the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences.

The new approach has quickly become the backbone of Global Europe (the main financial tool for EU international cooperation from 2021 to 2027) and its programming. It notably includes the conception of Team Europe Initiatives, which are the flagships of the Team Europe approach.

Team Europe Initiatives (‘TEIs’) focus on identifying critical priorities that constrain development in a given country or region, where a coordinated and coherent effort by ‘Team Europe’ would ensure results with a transformative impact.

More: https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/policies/team-europe-initiatives_en.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, commits 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to the so-called Kyoto target of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% against 1990 levels, over the 2008-2012 period. At the 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference there was an agreement to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol until 2020.

The Protocol was adopted at the Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in December 1997 and came into force on 16 February 2005.

The main distinction between the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize emissions, the Protocol sets binding targets.

The Kyoto Protocol introduced three market-based mechanisms, thereby creating what is now known as the carbon market.

The Kyoto mechanisms are:

• Clean development mechanism (CDM)
• Joint implementation (JI)
• Emissions trading (ET).

On 11 December 2019, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the European Green Deal – a plan to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. 

The Green Deal is a new growth strategy to make the EU’s economy sustainable and create sustainable industry and transport, without leaving anyone behind. A European Climate Law will have an aim to turn this political commitment into a legal obligation.

The Green Deal is a step towards a more holistic and integrated approach to address climate and environment-related challenges. It also attempts to mainstream environmental policy by bringing together, and improving, several existing policies, initiatives, and funding programmes dedicated to addressing sustainability and climate change.

The European Green Deal presents a roadmap for making the EU’s economy sustainable by turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities across all policy areas and making the transition just and inclusive for all. The European Green Deal aims to boost the efficient use of resources by moving to a clean, circular economy and stop climate change, revert biodiversity loss and cut pollution. It outlines investments needed and financing tools available, and explains how to ensure a just and inclusive transition. The European Green Deal covers all sectors of the economy, notably transport, energy, agriculture, buildings, and industries such as steel, cement, ICT, textiles and chemicals.

More: https://secca.eu/knowledge-hub/eu-policies-and-regulations/green-deal/.

Renewable energy is energy produced from sources like the sun and wind that are naturally replenished and do not run out. Renewable energy can be used for electricity generation, space and water heating and cooling, and transportation.

Non-renewable energy, in contrast, comes from finite sources that could get used up, such as fossil fuels, like coal and oil.

Types of Renewable Energy

Renewable energy sources, such as biomass, geothermal resources, sunlight, water, and wind, are natural resources that can be converted into these types of clean, usable energy:

• Bioenergy 
• Geothermal Energy 
• Hydrogen 
• Hydropower 
• Solar Energy 
• Wind Energy 

Benefits of Renewable Energy

The advantages of renewable energy are numerous and affect the economy, environment, national security, and human health. Here are some of the benefits of using renewable energy :

• Enhanced reliability, security, and resilience of the nation’s power grid
• Job creation throughout renewable energy industries 
• Reduced carbon emissions and air pollution from energy production
• Increased country energy independence
• Increased affordability, as many types of renewable energy are cost-competitive with traditional energy sources
• Expanded clean energy access for non-grid-connected or remote communities( as islanded communities).

A prosumer is a participant in the energy system who both produces and consumes energy.

Renewable energy technologies are changing the way of producing and using energy. The share of distributed energy sources is increasing rapidly, forcing all stakeholders to rethink the approach to grid planning and power system operation.

In the world, there is an obvious trend of rising retail electricity prices and falling technological costs. Distributed production is becoming more and more attractive from the perspective of electricity consumers. Consumers can now generate part of the electricity for their own needs instead of buying it from suppliers.

From a systems perspective, self-consumption is an additional tool to achieve renewable energy targets that can also help reduce grid losses and peak loads, increase energy efficiency, improve demand response and contribute to reducing CO2 emissions.

The significant drop in the cost of small-scale renewable energy technologies creates new opportunities for electricity consumers to help shape the energy transition. Policymakers are expected to proactively anticipate and accommodate the emergence of this self-consumption model while promoting energy security, efficiency and decarbonisation.

Distribution system operators (DSOs) are the operating managers (and sometimes owners) of energy distribution networks, operating at low, medium and, in some member states, high voltage levels (LV, MV). Transmission grids transport large quantities of high (and extreme high) voltage (HV, EHV) electricity across vast distances, often from large power plants to the outskirts of large cities or industrial zones, where it is transformed into lower voltages distributed to all end-users through the distribution network. Over-head and underground cables leading to your home or business are operated by DSOs.

Traditionally, energy systems from power generation to homes are one-directional and based on more predictable, controllable and centralised power generation.

Increasingly, more energy is being generated locally and connected directly to distribution networks, from solar panels on your roof, to small power plants. This is generally referred to by DSOs as distributed energy resources (DER) and in the specific case of renewables, distributed renewable energy sources (DRES). (Source: E.DSO)

Energy intensity is one of the indicators to measure the energy needs of an economy. It is often used as an approximation of energy efficiency. Many factors influence energy intensity. It reflects on structure of economy and its cycle, general standards of living and weather conditions in the reference area.

Energy intensity is calculated as units of energy per unit of GDP.

A transmission system operator (TSO) is an entity entrusted with transporting energy in the form of natural gas or electrical power on a national or regional level, using fixed infrastructure.

Due to the cost of establishing a transmission infrastructure, such as main power lines or gas main lines and associated connection points, a TSO is usually a natural monopoly, and as such is often subjected to regulations.

In electrical power business, a TSO is an operator that transmits electrical power from generation plants over the electrical grid to regional or local electricity distribution operators.

Energy intensity indicators presents a system of selected indicators which tasks is to track changes in the energy intensity of country level economy and economic sectors over time. 

Pollution, also called as environmental pollution, the introduction of the substances (solid, liquid, ) or forms of energy (such as heat, sound, radioactivity) into the environment at a rate faster than they can be dispersed, diluted, degraded, recycled or stored in a harmless form. It results in deleterious effects of such a nature as to endanger human health, harm living resources and ecosystems, and impair or interfere with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment.

The main types of pollution are air pollution, water pollution and soil pollution, which are usually classified by environmental area. Modern society is also affected by certain types of pollutants, such as noise pollution, light pollution, plastic pollution.