Climate Action

There is no doubt that the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are changing our living environment. Climate change is in our hands. We need to both work on limiting it as much as we can (mitigation), but we will also have to learn to adapt to new circumstances. TU Delft will harness its innovative powers to support the world-wide transition to non-fossil resources, and adaptation of the living environment to the consequences of global warming.

The problem is complex and urgent – but we have no other choice than to be optimistic and use all of our capacity to face the challenge, through our education programs and our research.

For more information, see:

In the Climate Action research programme, we start from four themes we consider to be paramount for future Climate Action:

The TU Delft vision on Climate Action is deeply founded in preceding decades of university wide climate action research. The goal of the Climate action research programme is to build on current strengths and identify the areas where there is a need to strengthen our capacities to keep up our (inter)national reputation as climate action university.

Climate Action News

21 December 2019

Leapfrogging towards sustainable palm oil

Leapfrogging towards sustainable palm oil

With palm oil being the most widely used vegetable oil in the world, the industry is likely to stay with us for the foreseeable future, despite its controversial reputation of pollution, deforestation and ignoring the needs of local communities. “The palm oil industry is only expanding, so doing nothing is not going to solve the problem,” says Dr Ralph Lindeboom of the department of Sanitary Engineering. Together with the PhD-researcher and Delft Global Fellow Saqr Al-Muraisy , he aims to help make the industry more sustainable for both the environment and local people.

14 December 2019

Mangroves caught in the middle

Mangroves caught in the middle

In a channel at TU Delft’s Water lab a stream of purple-tinted water makes its way past thousands of small wooden pegs. The water was dyed by PhD-candidate Son Truong Hong, who is closely observing the flow with an empty bottle of paint in his hands. This test forms part of his research into the importance of the mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta estuaries. Son is fascinated by the tangled roots of these extraordinary trees. What is the mangrove’s role in preventing river bank erosion? And, most crucially, how much of the mangrove forests needs to remain to support a healthy ecosystem?

10 December 2019

Greenland ice losses rising faster than expected

Greenland ice losses rising faster than expected

Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the IPCC’s high-end climate warming scenario, according to the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) Team.

10 December 2019

Weather alarm: chance of sudden death

Weather alarm: chance of sudden death

Rain radar, weather apps, satellite images and code yellow (weather warning code in NL): we are all fascinated by the weather. Nevertheless, even the experts know less about it all than we think, particularly when it comes to the weather at night and in cold areas. Bas van de Wiel wants to change that. He intends to use his ERC Consolidator Grant to give the underappreciated nights a bigger role in weather and climate models.

08 December 2019

Continuously scanning the coast

Continuously scanning the coast

Hotel Atlantic in Kijkduin overlooks the North Sea. On its deserted roof a state of the art laser scanner is monitoring the beach every hour, 24/7. Sander Vos hopes the resulting data will provide insight into the restoration of the coast after a storm when part of the beach and fore dunes disappear into the sea. With the information provided by the scanner he and his TU Delft colleagues hope to become ‘coastal weathermen’ who will be able to predict exactly how the beach behaves after a storm.