October 22, 2025
The European Parliament has approved two texts that pave the way for digital driving licenses on smartphones by the end of 2030. They do not replace the physical driver’s license, but both will be valid. In the future, it will also be possible to begin training to become a truck driver at the age of 17. […]
October 21, 2025
The city of Prague has decided to ban shared/rental e-scooters on its territory from January 2026. From that date, shared e-scooter providers will not be allowed to operate unless they have specific contracts. Prague isn’t banning the concept of shared e-scooters entirely; it’s banning unregulated operations. These contracts will specify where vehicles can be parked, […]
October 20, 2025
According to VeloVeilig Vlaanderen, a large-scale study on road safety in Flemish cities by newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, in which 27,676 residents participated, Flemish people give an average score of 4.8 out of 10 for general safety in their municipality. That’s a big fail. According to the study, 25% believe that there are still too […]
October 20, 2025
Antwerp N-VA politician Koen Kennis has been appointed as chairman of Lantis, the developer of the Oosterweel connection. Kennis has served as a Lantis director for 15 years. He succeeds his party colleague Marc Descheemaecker. “His commitment to the organisation and his years of experience in mobility issues made him an easy choice for this role.” […]
October 16, 2025
Following Tihange 3 in July, the nuclear plant Doel 4 has now also been reconnected to the electricity grid. Operator Engie announced this on Wednesday. Both nuclear reactors are now operating at full capacity, together producing 2 gigawatts. At the end of 2023, the previous federal government reached an agreement with Engie to extend the lifespans […]
October 16, 2025
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by a record amount in 2024, potentially further warming the planet and leading to more extreme climate events. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the air increased by 3.5 ppm (parts per million) between 2023 and 2024 – the highest increase since modern measurements began in 1957. […]
October 15, 2025
Work on extending the Ecluse steam network from the left to the right bank of the Scheldt has reached a significant milestone. On Tuesday, October 14th, Flemish Minister for Energy and Climate Melissa Depraetere visited the site to inaugurate this technical achievement. The Ecluse tunnel under the Scheldt River, the longest microtunnel in Belgium, transports […]
October 15, 2025
The federal judicial police in Halle-Vilvoorde have arrested three members of the same family from Sint-Pieters-Leeuw who organized large-scale fraud in the theoretical driving test. Research shows that family members helped candidates obtain their theoretical driving licenses fraudulently. One of the suspects had already been arrested in 2023 for similar crimes. According to the public prosecutor’s […]
October 14, 2025
The Flemish Utility Regulator (Vlaamse Nutsregulator, formerly VREG) currently sees no reason to introduce time-dependent network tariffs — i.e., cheaper grid fees when solar energy is abundant. The energy watchdog doesn’t want to make things more complicated for consumers. Nearly three years after the so-called ‘capacity tariff’ was introduced (in 2023), which makes households’ grid costs depend […]
October 13, 2025
The death of coral reefs marks the first catastrophic climate tipping point linked to greenhouse gas emissions. “Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2 degrees Celsius ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’,” the Global Tipping Points Report by 160 scientists across 87 institutions from 23 countries […]
October 10, 2025
The listed energy company EnergyVision wants to invest more in wind turbines to complement its solar panels. EnergyVision is a Belgian energy company that supplies 100% green, locally produced electricity, primarily from solar installations installed for households and businesses in Belgium. In addition to solar panels and EV charging solutions, EnergyVision is now testing small rooftop wind […]
October 09, 2025
Global biofuels emit 16% more CO2 than the fossil fuels they replace, due to the indirect impacts of farming and deforestation, a new Cerulogy report on behalf of T&E shows. By 2030, biofuels are projected to emit 70 Mt CO₂e more than the fossil fuels they replace, equivalent to the annual emissions of almost 30 […]
October 09, 2025
According to Christophe Dubon, spokesman for car and two-wheeler federation Febiac, the new motorcycle market performed well in the first nine months of the year. “During the first nine months of 2025, the new motorcycle market experienced a slight decline of -4.3%, with a total of 21,728 registrations, which is not a bad result. The […]
October 08, 2025
According to the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), growth in renewable energy is slowing due to policy changes in the United States and China. In its Renewables 2025 report, the IEA has lowered its projection for global renewable capacity additions in 2025–2030 by approximately 248 GW, or roughly 5%, compared to its 2024 outlook. In the […]
October 08, 2025
The German logistics company Hödlmayr, in cooperation with Stellantis, is currently using part of DronePort’s site in Brustem (Sint-Truiden, Limburg) to store a large number of new cars in ‘overstock’ produced by Stellantis.” Now, Hödlmayr has applied for a permit. What began as a temporary stopgap solution for car manufacturer Stellantis at the end of […]
September 29, 2025
After the construction of a large gas-fired power plant encountered permitting issues, Engie developed the country’s largest Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) on its historic site in Vilvoorde, on the outskirts of Brussels. The 320 battery modules each contain dozens of battery packs, storing large amounts of electricity. Located north of Brussels, the Vilvoorde site has […]
September 29, 2025
Anyone in Belgium who charges their electric company car at home will receive reimbursement from their employer for the charging costs. Since January, a flat-rate amount has been applied because the actual price is virtually impossible to calculate. This flat rate, which reimburses the cost of charging electric company cars at home, will decrease from […]
September 26, 2025
China announced on Wednesday at the United Nations climate summit that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 to 10 percent by 2035, a figure the European Union considers insufficient. It was Chinese President Xi Jinping who presented the climate goals during a video address. It is the first time that China, currently the world’s […]
September 25, 2025
According to a 2025 report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK), ocean acidification has now exceeded a safe boundary for ecosystems. It is the first time it is placed in the ‘danger zone’. This also means that seven out of the nine ‘planetary boundaries’ have now been crossed. This concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ […]
September 25, 2025
The French government has designated the French company TotalEnergies and the German RWE to build a large wind farm off the Normandy coast – the largest renewable energy project ever in France. RWE and TotalEnergies had been prequalified and are collaborating on the project’s design, development, and execution. TotalEnergies will act as operator. The project, […]
September 24, 2025
It’s a different way of promoting the green transition, in this case, in pink. The Sindh province in Pakistan, in the southeastern region of the country, has recently launched a bold new initiative aimed at transforming mobility for women. Female students and employees can now utilize a fleet of pink electric scooters at no cost. […]
September 24, 2025
A pilot project has been launched in Antwerp, in which public transport company De Lijn will use AI driver assistance systems on trams to help prevent accidents in the future. The system, developed by the Ghent technology company Otiv, was presented on Tuesday, September 23rd, in Antwerp, in the presence of Minister of Mobility Annick […]
September 23, 2025
The Belgian port, transport, and logistics sector is in complete transition toward decarbonization, sustainability, and digitalization. According to the new ING Port Study, the sector is embracing change but also faces several challenges. The study examines the factors that accelerate the implementation of greening and digitalization, as well as the barriers that exist. The aim was to gather […]
September 23, 2025
The recent car-free Sunday, on September 21st, once again proved that air quality is improving and noise pollution is decreasing, especially along Brussels’ busiest roads. The sound pressure dropped by 99 percent compared to a regular Sunday. The measuring stations on the E40 in Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe and the E411 in Oudergem recorded sound pressure levels of 50 […]
September 22, 2025
According to a new study by the Federal Planning Bureau, Belgium should build 8 new nuclear power plants by 2050 to make its electricity supply climate-neutral. In the most cost-optimal scenario, both offshore wind and nuclear energy will be fully expanded. Offshore wind capacity will then grow from 2.2 to 8 gigawatts, and new nuclear power […]
September 22, 2025
Droneport in Sint-Truiden, a 30-hectare industry park specifically for aviation, drone, advanced air mobility, and unmanned flight testing, wants to build its own solar park on the nearby site and company buildings. The business park aims to generate its own energy to fly electrically. An agreement in principle has been reached to launch the solar […]
September 19, 2025
According to a new study by the VUB University in Brussels, it is technologically possible to reduce CO₂ emissions from Belgian industry by 90 percent by 2040-2050, but it won’t be easy. We face major challenges to green our industry and keep it here. Cheaper electricity and large-scale CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) will be essential. […]
September 19, 2025
The city of Hasselt (Limburg) wants to make car sharing more attractive by temporarily, until December 15, 2025, reimbursing the start-up costs. Anyone who registers as a new user with Cambio or Cozywheels will receive a refund of their connection fees for the time being. At Cambio, the registration fee is 35 euros; at Cozywheels, it […]
September 18, 2025
Industrial group VDL and the Dutch province of Limburg are reserving €25 million for the future use of the former VDL Nedcar car factory in Born, where BMWs and MINIs were once assembled until the company withdrew as a customer. VDL now wants to give the site a “broad purpose”, so the complex will be used, […]
September 17, 2025
On Tuesday, Port of Antwerp-Bruges organized the first fully autonomous truck journey on public roads in Belgium. This milestone, operated under the Belgian regulatory framework, showcases how Belgium – and Europe — can take the lead in advancing autonomous freight technology. With this initiative, the port authority wants to emphasise its pioneering role in the field of […]
September 17, 2025
According to a recent Swiss study published in early September in the scientific journal Nature, nearly one-quarter of heatwaves would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without global warming, and can be attributed to the emissions of individual energy producers. In other words, some recent heatwaves would never have occurred without the emissions of a few large […]
September 16, 2025
Eurostar, the European high-speed train operator, has just presented its 2024 sustainability report, with a clear focus on circularity. The company opts for sustainable materials and strategies when designing new terminals and lounges. And there’s another noteworthy initiative: surplus sandwiches will be processed and converted into craft beer. “Since May 2024, we have converted unused […]
September 15, 2025
By 2040, 30 percent of all journeys in Flanders should be by bicycle. This is the ambition of the Flemish government, which wants to invest 300 million euros annually in its cycling policy. These investments will definitely pay off in the future, experts say. The Flemish government also wants an integrated cycling policy. Minister of Mobility Annick […]
September 12, 2025
According to data from the banking federation, Febelfin, analyzed by newspaper De Tijd, anyone borrowing money for a new car today takes out an average loan of €23,750. That’s €8,250 or 53% more than ten years ago. A similar trend is evident in the purchase of used cars. While ten years ago the average borrowing for […]
September 11, 2025
While the number of occupational accidents has decreased over the past decade, accidents on the way to and from work have increased. In Belgium, more than 10,000 accidents involving ‘soft mobility’ occurred last year on the way to, from, or for work, according to an extensive study by the insurance federation Assuralia. In five years, the […]
September 10, 2025
Transport & Environment’s analysis of the 2023 European Environment Agency (EEA) data – covering 806,000 PHEVs – reveals that real-world CO₂ emissions are nearly five times higher than official test figures. This gap is driven by overly optimistic Utility Factors (UFs)—the assumed share of electric driving for plug-in hybrids—in official computations. The gap is widening Since […]
September 09, 2025
Some 150 leading companies from the e-mobility sector sent a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, asking the EU not to postpone the 2035 ban on combustion engines. The call to stick to the zero-emission target for cars and vans was prompted by a vote in the European Parliament, in which the […]
September 08, 2025
A new traffic sign has recently (July 1st, 2025) been introduced in Spain, and it is already causing quite a stir. The sign requires drivers to maintain a 70-meter minimum distance, but that isn’t easy to estimate. And what if a car suddenly appears in front of you? In 2023, rear-end collisions on highways tragically caused […]
September 05, 2025
Never before have Belgian police registered so many traffic violations (9.2 million) as last year. That represents a 10.7 percent increase compared to the previous year, marking the highest number ever. The number of minor speeding violations, in particular, increased sharply. In total, drivers were caught speeding more than 7.6 million times, almost 13 percent more […]
September 04, 2025
The capacity to store CO2 underground is much lower than initially thought. This is evident from a study published by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, which appeared in the journal Nature. Underground carbon capture has long been marketed as a climate solution, as a way out […]
September 03, 2025
Air quality in the Brussels-Capital Region has improved over the past ten years. According to the latest Annual Report on Air Quality from Brussels Environment, the low-emission zone, the accelerated transition from diesel to other engines, the modal shift, and technological developments explain this positive trend. However, not all mandatory standards are being met, and […]
September 03, 2025
The auditor of the Belgian Council of State has advised rejecting the cancellation appeal of train manufacturer Alstom. Alstom had gone to court against plans by the railway company NMBS/SNCB to award an order for hundreds of new trainsets to the Spanish company Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF). According to Alstom, there were several violations […]
September 02, 2025
According to a recent report from energy thin tank Ember, China has installed 256 gigawatts of additional solar capacity in the first half of this year – more than two-thirds of the global total and more than double the amount installed in the first half of 2024. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Chinese […]
September 01, 2025
Anyone driving a camper or motorhome weighing more than 3,500 kg will soon no longer be required to hold a category C driver’s license. With a short training course or exam, a category B driver’s license will soon be sufficient for campers up to 4,250 kg. With a trailer, this can even reach up to […]
September 01, 2025
Today, drivers lose their licenses for fifteen days if they exceed the 1.2 per mille limit. Starting September 1st, this will be 0.8 per mille in the provinces of Antwerp and Limburg. The East Flanders public prosecutor’s office is also considering stricter measures. Drunk driving is one of the leading causes of traffic accidents. Research […]
August 29, 2025
On Thursday, the Innoptus Solar Team finished third in Adelaide at the World Solar Car Racing Championship. Due to the bad weather, the Belgians decided to start half an hour later to store more energy in their battery, but this dropped them from second to third place. They ultimately finished third in Adelaide, after a 3,021 km […]
August 29, 2025
Belgian employees spend an average of one hour (57 minutes, to be specific) traveling to and from work. Some even spend more than an hour and a half commuting. This is evident from international research by human resources specialist SD Worx among 16,000 employees in 15 European countries and the UK. According to a survey […]
August 28, 2025
According to the Belgian Mobility Dashboard, a freely accessible platform that provides a range of essential mobility indicators for Belgium, it turns out that despite smoother traffic in the summer, Belgian roads are not safer. As in previous years, the summer months brought a noticeable decrease in traffic jams on the roads. But paradoxically, less traffic doesn’t […]
August 27, 2025
On Tuesday, work began to install a shore power installation at the cruise terminal on the Swedish Quay in Zeebrugge (Belgium). In the near future, cruise ships will be able to switch off their polluting diesel generators and fully utilize shore power. Shore power is an environmentally friendly and quiet way for ships to moor. It allows […]
August 26, 2025
Northern Lights, a Norwegian project for storing CO2 under the seabed, has stored its first quantities of carbon dioxide. The international consortium, involving energy companies Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies, is the world’s first commercial carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage service (CCS). “We have reached an exciting milestone: We now injected and stored the very first […]
August 22, 2025
The German start-up Voltfang, which repurposes electric vehicle (EV) batteries for stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS), opened its first factory on Tuesday. Old electric car batteries – typically those still retaining at least 80% of their original capacity – will be given a new life as a renewable energy storage facility. Businesses and households […]
August 21, 2025
This year, 967,026 hectares of nature have already gone up in flames in the European Union – four times the average (244,011) since measurements began in 2006. Spain stands out with a staggering 4.4 times increase, or nearly 392,000 hectares of devastated land (and record fire emissions). Portugal is also severely affected (2.2 times its average), […]
August 20, 2025
As of October 1st, the city of Bruges will designate almost the entire city center as a cycling zone. The current 90 ‘bicycle streets’ will be expanded by an additional 300. Only the access roads to the city and the De Lijn route will be excluded from the expansion of the bicycle zone. This is […]
August 19, 2025
Every year, more than 360 children are involved in a traffic accident on their way to school – more than two victims per school day. That is why the Walloon Road Safety Agency (Agence Wallonne pour la Sécurité Routière, AWSR) is launching an awareness-raising campaign to prepare parents and children for their school journey. The […]
August 18, 2025
A recent UCLA study discovered that the air around EV fast chargers in use had twice the amount of harmful fine particles typically found in an urban environment. Plugging an EV into a DC fast charger kicks up fine particles that pollute the air. Electric vehicles may be completely tailpipe emissions-free, but they still pollute […]
August 14, 2025
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has once again lowered its global oil demand growth forecast for 2025 to 680,000 barrels per day (bpd), down from previous estimates of around 700,000 bpd. This reflects oversupply and weak consumption across major economies like China, India, and Brazil. This marks the slowest demand growth since 2009, excluding the impact […]
August 13, 2025
Fatbikes may be very popular, especially among young people, but most cities are happy to see them gone. Some Dutch cities – Enschede, Hengelo, and Amsterdam, for instance – have even considered banning these cumbersome electric bikes, and now the Belgian town of Hasselt in Limburg is also considering a ban. But what exactly is […]
August 12, 2025
The United Kingdom is considering plans to introduce a mandatory eye test for older road users to reduce road deaths and injuries. According to news media BBC and Sky News, people over 70 may face a driving ban in the future if they fail a mandatory eye test. In 2024, 1,633 people were killed in traffic and […]
August 11, 2025
Summer is only halfway over, but last Sunday, last year’s Belgian record of 408 hours of negative electricity prices was broken. This means that once again, we generated more electricity than we consumed, causing the price to drop so much that it fell below zero euros. A significant factor contributing to these frequent negative prices […]
August 08, 2025
Anyone who thinks lithium is, first and foremost, the key component in an electric car’s battery, watch this. Scientists have discovered that a lithium supplement also appears to help combat memory loss, which offers new hope for Alzheimer’s patients. According to a recent publication by Nature, the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journal, low levels of […]
