On 24 June 2010, Dutch Minister Huizinga opened the Floating Pavilion (Drijvend Paviljoen) in the Rijnhaven area of Rotterdam. The pavilion is intended as an icon for sustainable construction and design and the ambitious climate action plan advocated by Rotterdam. The Floating Pavilion also houses the newly established national water centre Nationaal Watercentrum - a showcase and meeting point for the Dutch water sector.

Plants
The Floating Pavilion employs the crème de la crème of sustainable technology and is a showpiece for sustainable construction and design. It is heated and cooled using solar energy and surface water, its waste water is purified and reused and plants are used for insulation. "The Nationaal Water Centrum has enabled us to combine forces in the field of water innovation and strengthen our competitive position internationally. It provides an opportunity to present Dutch water expertise to a wide public, both in the Netherlands and abroad," according to Minister Huizinga, who officially opened the pavilion with Mayor Aboutaleb and representatives from the water sector.

The Danish capital Copenhagen has announced a climate plan which will make the Danish capital CO2-neutral by 2025. The plan consists of fifty initiatives. These include some heart-warming ideas such as engaging lots of children in tree planting activities. However, to achieve more substantial emissions reductions, the commercial energy sector will have to do the lion's share of carbon abatement, according to the Danish Energy Association in its daily newsletter. 75% of the reduction - 375,000 tons of CO2 - will need to be achieved by the heat and electricity providers. The main companies are DONG Energy and Vattenfall. They are expected to meet these targets by shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy. To encourage them in their endeavours, a recent report shows that it is possible to double the amount of renewable energy used for district heating in the capital area from 35% to 70% by 2025, without incurring significant budgetary problems. To reach this objective, it will be necessary to to exploit biofuel and waste-to-energy technologies. In addition, geothermal energy should be used for heating and cooling. These changes should make it possible to run the entire district heating without using coal, according to the report. Director Inge Thorup Madsen of the Metropolitan Copenhagen Heating Transmission Company comments: "We were positively surprised by the conclusions of the analysis. We had expected that it was possible to incorporate large amounts of renewable energy into the collective district heating system, but that it could happen so massively and quickly while retaining good economics, is a very good sign."

Source: ClimateActionMap.org

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has outlined Government's latest measures to help householders save money and energy as he welcomed 10:10 - a new campaign to cut carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Around 90,000 homes in some of the poorest areas in the UK should see an average saving of 20% per year in their emissions through a new community based energy saving scheme which starts today. This amounts to financial savings of around £300 per year off fuel bills. In the past year, more than 1.2 million homes have received some form of insulation under the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target with enough professional loft insulation installed to stretch from London to Sydney and back. The number of households getting this help through energy companies has been increased, with Government recently increasing the target by 20%. Responding to the 10:10 campaign, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has confirmed that it is on course to cut its own emissions at its London headquarters by 10% by April 2010 and it will make further reductions through the rest of 2010 and beyond. DECC staff have been encouraged by Ed Miliband to join him in taking up the 10:10 pledge in their homes and lifestyles.

The British government has published its plan of how the UK will meet its target of cutting CO2 emissions by 34 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020. The plan includes pay-as-you-save home energy makeovers, helping homes produce their own clean energy and boosting electricity production from low carbon sources. The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan sets out how the UK will cut C02 emissions by more than a third from 1990 levels by 2020. A 21 per cent reduction has already been achieved, equal to cutting all the emissions from four cities the size of London. The ways in which the UK will further reduce CO2 emissions are set out in the following areas.

The power sector

Around 50 per cent of the yearly emissions cuts between now and 2020 will be achieved by making the energy mix more green. The government expects 40 per cent of the electricity used in 2020 to come from low carbon sources - 30 per cent from renewables, the rest from nuclear (including new build) and clean coal. New measures include:

* speeding up planning decisions on renewable and low carbon energy while protecting environmental and local concerns
* confirmation of the final shortlist of the schemes for the Severn Tidal Power feasibility study - three barrages and two lagoons
* approval for the UK's largest biomass power station on Teesside