Nowadays, energetic utilization of biomass, biotechnology attracts a big attention not only from the environmental point of view but also have a social, political and economical impact. According to the Directive 2003/30/EC of the European Parliament and the European Council the emission of greenhouse gases can be reduced by 49% using bioethanol produced by a manufacturing process based on corn, instead of crude oil based fuels. Moreover in Hungary from 1st of July 2007 only gasoline with at least 4.4% bioethanol content is commercialized. In this article, some concrete examples of successful developments and/or implementation of biomass projects in Hungary are given such as: production friendly raw synthetic material at "Nitrokémia" chemical plant, manufacture of bioethanol by "Hungrana" and "Győr Distillery" companies, bio-ethyl-tert-buthyl-ether production by MOL Pls. Danube Refinery, research on new generation of biofuels. The main advantages and disadvantages as well motivations for further research and development of Hungarian bio-industrial and bio-consumer sectors are discussed.

Numerous cities aim to mitigate their contribution to climate change and provide a liveable environment in the context of sustainable development. In order to measure these efforts, benchmarking performance would be a good solution. Methods for environmental analysis have their limitations when it comes to evaluating a city and other aggregated indicators focus on certain aspects of a sustainable or liveable settlement. The SDEWES Index was used for benchmarking several cities of different sizes in terms of metrics related to energy, water and environmental systems successfully thus it was chosen to compare the performance of Veszprém and Zalaegerszeg, two environmentally conscious Hungarian county seats of roughly the same size and population. The SDEWES Index consists of 7 dimensions, namely energy consumption, industrial profile with CO2 emissions, CO2-saving measures, R&D, renewable energy potential and utilization, water and environmental quality, and social environment and sustainability policy. Each dimension is composed of 5 indicators that provide information on sustainable development of energy, water and environmental systems in cities. Using the SDEWES Index the strengths and weaknesses of the two cities are highlighted, locating those key parameters where improvement can be achieved. Both for Veszprém and Zalaegerszeg progress could be realized concerning energy-saving measures and the proportion of green areas could be increased. To improve the method and facilitate a more comprehensive comparison of cities of differing sizes, data should be provided concerning the territory or population. Also, the definition and inclusion of a worst and best case scenario that takes into account the parameters would be advantageous in terms of a comparison. These were named ‘horror’ and SDEWES cities by the authors, respectively.

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The wall of the red mud waste disposal facility at Ajka, Hungary ruptured on October 4, 2010. Nearly about 1 million m 3 of red mud sludge got out of the disposal facility and the neighbouring environment was heavily contaminated. In the emergency situation the top priority was put on the rescue of human lives and to provide first aid to the injured people. Many people end their lives will wear the scars caused by the caustic red mud sludge. The polluted surface waters (Stream Torna, River Marcal and River Rába) get into the River Danube therefore immediate measures had to be implemented to avoid the distribution of the pollution and to limit the spreading of the pollutants. In October 2010 the Accredited Water Quality Telemetry System devised by the Institute of Environmental Engineering, University of Pannonia and the ÖKORET Spin-off company was installed in the direct vicinity of Stream Torna and it measured and controlled the water quality at Devecser. The commencement of the dry red mud disposal treatment technology was realized by MAL Co. Ltd. on April 3, 2011 as a consequence of actions following the catastrophe. In this way the water content of the deposited red mud sludge generated was decreased from 80% to 30%. The paper deals with the results of the surface water monitoring and the emergency measures taken.