Taking action with Europe to mitigate climate change

Climate change is a thread that the word is facing. Its impact involves a wide range of dimensions, from health and wellbeing to economic, society, scientific, politics and ethical aspects. Due to the increase of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere we are facing irreversible consequences on the climate of the planet.

Europe’s main priority is to reduce the emissions and stabilize the level of GHG for a mitigation of the climate change. The target is a sustainable transition towards a climate neutral economy by 2050. In addition, it is expected by 2030 to reduce the GHG emissions to at least the 55 % compared to the emissions levels of 1990.

Climate mitigation actions are covered by the European Commission by several programmes, with a special focus on the LIFE Programme, the EU Programme for environment and climate action. LIFE is a key contributor to the European Green Deal by the resource efficiency and competitive economy without emissions of greenhouse gases, protecting the health, well- being and natural capital.

A great interest in climate change mitigation

From Zabala Innovation, we have also detected a high interest in climate mitigation actions. Recently, 2022 LIFE call was closed and Zabala Innovation has supported its clients with the presentation of proposals. This year, we have experienced a significant increase in the number of proposals submitted to the Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Subprogramme, specifically Climate Change Mitigation.

Historically, around the 6% from the proposals presented from Zabala Innovation’s clients to the LIFE Programme were related with climate change mitigation. However, in this year’s call, close to the 30% of the proposals of our clients were aligned with this topic.

Actions regarding climate change

Climate change mitigation proposals have covered actions regarding very diverse topics:

• Reduction of the emissions in the energy-intensive industries (EIIs) in production, supply chain and avoiding significant carbon leakages by innovative and cost-effective technologies and processes.
• Increase the generation and use of renewable energy towards the transition to a cleaner generation of energy avoiding the use of traditional sources based on fossil fuels.
• Improvement of the energy efficiency and contribute to the reduction of the natural gas dependency. In this sense, the LIFE Programme has this year included the new topic regarding the sustainable production of biogas and biomethane from waste and residue steams.
• Actions to support the shift to zero-emission mobility (transport and fuels) and decrease of fossil fuels dependency. For this purpose, the development of infrastructure for alternative fuels (electricity, hydrogen or gas) and the implementation of smart recharging solutions is required.
• Actions regarding the conservation of land and forestry with a focus on agriculture. There is a big potential to reduce emissions from agricultural activities, such as sustainable livestock and manure management or precision farming.
• Actions of carbon capture and use; as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS), for example, carbon removals in soils and biomass, chemically capturing the carbon dioxide and piping it underground so that it is contained in rock formations without leaking or use of harvested biomass in products to ensure long-term carbon storage (wooden construction materials…).
• Actions to recover, recycle and reclaim fluorinated gases (F-gases) and ozone depleting substances (ODS) at the end of the life of the refrigeration equipment for their further reuse in new equipment avoiding their emission to the atmosphere. Furthermore, in response to the natural gas crisis, the REPowerEU action for more affordable, secure and sustainable energy aims to promote heat pumps to decarbonise the heating sector. In this sense, the development of alternatives to traditional fluorinated gases is targeted.

A global challenge

Finally, a behavioural change is fundamental to achieve the climate change mitigation targeted through the European Green Deal, involving all sectors of society and economy. This is a challenge that cannot be solved at local scale and that affects to all living species. The more the actions to mitigate the climate change are delayed, more the situation is become irreversible leading to extremely harmful events, such as extreme weather events (floods, fires, winds…), ecosystems destruction towards desertification and sea level rise.

It is clear the strong interest that the European Commission has in the climate change mitigation and our clients have as well answered in the same way. Climate change mitigation actions will increase their relevance inside the LIFE Programme, increasing the funding of projects aligned with this topic. EU has decided to include actions across the entire budget to achieve the climate goals. Consequently, other programmes are also moving towards the climate sustainable actions. Among others:

• Horizon Europe is contributing to climate actions through development of technology and demonstrators, and missions.
• Innovation Fund is funding large projects for decarbonisation of the energy intensive industry with beyond the state-of-the-art technology.

At Zabala Innovation we are open to listen to any proposal you might have to reduce the climate change and to help you to fund your project.