EURODEMO: Encouraging Innovative and Sustainable Soil and Groundwater Remediation Technology Applications in Europe

摘要

Sustainable development is currently one of the prominent topics in the European Union, as demonstrated by recent European Commission initiatives (CEC, 2001; CEC, 2005). However, with regards to sustainability in the field of remediation, the current European market situation has vast room for improvement: innovative tech- nologies that claim better sustainability than conventional technologies are available, with proven applicability and performance at demonstration scale, but disappointing market uptake. A significant cause of the disappointing market uptake is low communi- cation across Europe in parallel with poor exchange of information and experience of relevant stakeholders. Consequently, the European Commission has launched EURODEMO as a project with the goal to collect, process and disseminate information on innovative remediation applications, thereby specifically targeting the demonstration scale as the weakest link in the development chain. This paper gives an insight into several strategic steps that have been taken by EURODEMO to achieve this goal. Most importantly, compilation of the collected data and obtained results to one central information source (http://www.eurodemo.info) will provide a foundation for the upcoming Environmental Technologies Verification (ETV) process in Europe.