The European Parliament goes greener

Measures to reduce CO2 emissions
After a study commissioned by the Presidency of the European Parliament about measures to reduce CO2 emissions in the institution’s offices, was created an ad hoc working group, composed by Parliament’s vice-chairmen.
The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, for the 30% within 2020, 10% more than the climate-energy set of rules presented by the Commission, currently in discussion at the European Parliament. The study found that the carbon footprint, or the CO2 percentage produced by Parliament itself can be  shared into 32% from electricity and natural gas, 28% from transport, 19% from buildings and hardware, 20%  from the provision of equipment and services and 1% from heating.
Moreover, the European Parliament, under the treaty, must be located in 3 separate places, so as not to concentrate in a single state all the power at the European level, leading to considerable consumption and handling of goods and people displacement.
Among the first measures taken to reduce the CO2 emissions, the new building in Luxembourg will set up solar panels installed on the roof, geothermic energy from the soil and biomass heating.
In one of the buildings in Brussels, the “Antall and Brandt”, in addition, has been mounted a 145,000 liters tank of rainwater to be used for water closets of the building, 8 rotating solar panels have been installed to heat the water and offices are equipped with detectors that monitor the presence of persons to control lights, heating and ventilation. Another initiative will cover the official cars, that will be gradually replaced with hybrid vehicles.
Gérard Onesta, head of the working group, said "the situation today is not the best, unfortunately, we have more travels and more consumption. We are only at the beginning of our green revolution, but soon we will be an example to emulate."