Climate Action

Wednesday 18 March, National Tree Day (Nationale Boomfeestdag), will see the opening of the first climate arboretum at TU Delft.

The climate institute at TU Delft would like to take up the challenge to develop scientific knowledge, scientific tools and technological solutions necessary for reversing the increase in atmospheric emissions.

Pee not only generates uncontrollable laughter in five-year-olds but energy as well. Niels van Linden is currently working on a concept to produce electricity from urban and industrial residual waters, which in turn will power the energy-neutral water treatment system he is hoping to develop.

Earth’s primary resources are finite. Human inventiveness, however, isn’t. At TU Delft’s laboratories, Francesco Di Maio is working on the recycling of concrete waste. Just like the Phoenix, the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes, Di Maio wants new concrete buildings to arise from their predecessors waste. He hopes his technologies will help to transform urban economies into self-sustaining loops.

Waking up early and going into the field on a small fishermen's boat, while the sun is rising behind volcano tops. That's how days started for PhD student Silke Tas during her two month fieldwork in Indonesia. The rest of her days were less idyllic: they consisted mostly of treading through the mud to get the right measurements for her research. She studies the workings of coastal sandbanks that give a chance to mangrove forests to restore, so that the forests can, in turn, prevent coast erosion.