It depends on the region. The US has shale gas which is genuinely cheaper than coal. Europe doesn't want to use coal for political reasons. China and India barely use gas since it can't compete with coal.
Card fees aren't paid by end customers either. The Swedish iDEAL equivalent, Swish, is more expensive than cards for smaller transactions (below 15 euros). Wero will be like Swish, not Pix.
>Private banks are resistant to a digital euro both as a payment method and a store of value. The digital euro is designed to be a free, public payment method, directly challenging fee-based systems operated by banks. This is its key usefulness in terms of sovereignty. But it could also be used as a digital wallet and users may move their money out of private bank accounts to central bank-backed digital euro wallets meaning banks lose out.
So far they have successfully delayed any implementation.
Most likely because your country's banks are heavily lobbying against such initiatives.
It's easy to blame Visa and Mastercard, but the reason why the EU doesn't have this is that the EPP (the largest political group in the European Parliament) answers to European banks, which don't want it.
Of the big tech companies, Apple is definitely the one that has embraced America First the most. If you live outside the US, you get features later (if at all) and have to pay more for that privilege.
I highly doubt that hydrogen heating was ever considered. It's usually pushed by the gas lobby (since most hydrogen comes from gas), and Sweden doesn't have a strong gas lobby.
The EU will probably wait until the launch of a digital wallet that can do anonymous age verification. Otherwise it won't get enough political support.
It depends on the implementation. The EU's European Digital Identity Wallet will allow users to prove that they are over 18 without sharing any other personal information.