Sustainability

Climate change is particularly intense in the Arctic. To assess its consequences and determine what role this region plays in global warming, two teams of scientists from EPFL have visited the area. One to gain a better understanding of the region's air composition, the other to quantify the greenhouse gases sequestered in Greenland fjords sourced by glacial water.

A team of scientists from EPFL and other research institutes have identified just how an Alpine flower is surviving by adapting its genes to local habitats. This discovery has important implications for the protection of ecosystems under threat.

Extreme heatwaves are on the rise. When do they become critical for forest trees? In the hot summer of 2023, a research team led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) investigated this in Switzerland, southern France and Spain.

To transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewables – which are intermittent by nature – we’ll need to rework our entire system of power storage, transmission and distribution. Yet experts haven’t yet found the right energy mix or power storage system, or how to balance supply and demand effectively.

EPFL researchers discovered that deepwater renewal in Lake Geneva in wintertime is not only due to vertical mixing. Instead, strong currents coming from the lake’s Petit Lac basin and nearshore zones of the Grand Lac play a vital role.

ETH researchers are developing a process inspired by nature that efficiently recovers europium from old fluorescent lamps. The approach could lead to the long-awaited recycling of rare earth metals.