Oriented on making people closer

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered a keynote speech, noting that global warming and COVID-19 are challenges that united Europe must combat together to set an example for a healthy, environmentally conscious life to the world.

As a result of the measures taken, according to the program developers, by 2030 the continent will be able to reduce the amount of harmful substances in the air by at least 55%.

Europe is the third largest region in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, after China and the United States, and although the amount has been decreasing by about 177.000 Kt annually since 2017, solutions have to be con-sidered that will further reduce air pollution.

Europe’s forests absorb about 11% of air polluting gases released into the at-mosphere. As von der Leyen noted, this is good, but not enough, because even fully forested Europe will not be able to offset emissions if they remain at cur-rent levels.

According to the latest data, waste processing accounts for 2.75% of all haz-ardous waste, agriculture - 8.72%, industrial pollution - 7.82%.

The remaining 80.70% is energy, of which a third is emissions from vehicles, including cars, aircrafts, ships, diesel locomotives. Obviously, Europe’s forests absorb only harmful substances related to garbage and agricultural activities.

The main measure to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced is con-sidered the reduction of coal-fired power generation and the development of renewable sources of electricity.

Europe already has new technologies that are waiting to be introduced. For ex-ample, in Sweden, hydrogen has recently been used instead of coal in steel production. Hydrogen is the key word in this respect. Hydrogen energy should, together with renewable sources, create a new energy tandem that will allow Europe to reduce its dependence on energy imports.

But not only energy is subject to improvement. The construction sector must be transformed from a carbon source to a carbon absorber, for example, by in-creasingly using organic building materials such as wood.

Of course, with a gradual transition to renewable sources, a lot of technical dif-ficulties will arise, but experts are sure that this is exactly the case when the whole world will benefit from complex challenges.

The main advantage for the big cities of the continent after resolving the prob-lem will be the fact that the air will become almost twice as clean. And this will significantly reduce the number of people suffering from respiratory diseases.

ORIENT news