The Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (TU Delft), a public university focussing on technology, announced on Tuesday, November 1, that it plans to invest €100M to make its campus more sustainable.
TU Delft is putting into action its previously announced Sustainable TU Delft – vision, aim, and action plan. In the next few years, the Dutch public university will look to create a CO2-neutral, circular, and climate-adaptive campus, with a focus on boosting biodiversity and quality of life.
Jaco van Noppen, Director Campus Real Estate & Facility Management, says, “This enables us to work step by step towards our sustainability goals; at the same time it will help to scale up innovations off campus.”
Sustainability Coordinator, Andy van den Dobbelsteen, adds, “Governments and other organisations struggle with sustainability; we want to remove obstacles. This is where the strengths of our researchers, engineers, designers, and the public and private sectors come together. This is how we actively contribute to society’s sustainability issues. In short: impact for a better society.”
A sustainable campus
TU Delft says experiments will be conducted around campus to investigate new sustainable approaches and processes.
According to Van Noppen, a portion of the funding will be used to test innovations. “We see the campus as a living lab, a realistic environment to do this. In the high-rise building of the EEMCS faculty for instance, we will test an innovative solar chimney to see if it can be used for sustainable ventilation and the generation of electricity.”
Van den Dobbelsteen mentions in a statement that, in 2030, people on campus will study and work in a bright, green environment, in buildings heated by renewable sources. Restaurants will serve nutritious and flavorful cuisine that is primarily plant-based and produced on campus. The procurement process will be totally based on closed cycles.
TU Delft specialises on all elements of climate and environment, including buildings, energy systems, procurement, waste management, mobility, food, and so on. Nature is also featured, as efforts are underway to restore biodiversity and make the campus climate-ready for 2050.
Van den Dobbelsteen adds, “With everything we are currently developing, we are taking the expected future climate into account: more flooding, longer periods of drought, extreme heat and more severe storms. For example, we want to use part of the campus for the collection of rainwater that we can then put to good use in our buildings.”
Towards a zero-emission energy system
Many of the innovations are related to the energy transition. “We are using sustainable sources for the heating of our buildings, and perhaps eventually also for homes in the municipality of Delft,” says Van Noppen.
A heat network will also be installed on the campus, allowing heat from cooling operations to be stored in the ground and utilised to heat adjacent facilities. Van den Dobbelsteen adds, “Our new buildings on Campus South have so much residual heat that we could use it to heat an outdoor swimming pool. So we are looking for creative solutions to make optimal use of all that energy.”
Brief about TU Delft
According to the Higher Education and Research Act (WHW), Delft University of Technology is a public legal body. Its primary responsibilities include scientific education, scientific research, knowledge transmission to society, and social responsibility promotion. The university is classified as a “public benefit institution”.
TU Delft’s 8 faculties offer 16 bachelor’s and more than 30 master’s programmes. Its 25,000+ students and 6,000 employees share a common fascination for science, design and technology.
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