Lectures & Events

Title: City neighbourhood decarbonisation from theory to practice

By Riccardo M. Pulselli; Project manager @ Indaco2

10 April 2019
Sustainability takes its roots in “non equilibrium” thermodynamics and evolutionary physics. Particularly the concept of dissipative structures by Ilya Prigogine applies to cities and allows for raising awareness on the climate crisis.

Strategies for climate change mitigation in cities start from knowledge of real “dissipative” processes to identify challenges and opportunities. Carbon accounting is among monitoring tools to inform administrators, citizens and other stakeholders and address choices for climate action. In particular, a Carbon Accounting framework have been developed within the City-Zen project and demonstrated through roadshows in different European cities. The assessment of greenhouse gas emissions allowed to inform urban policies and design through clear communication and to estimate the effects, in terms of Carbon Footprint mitigation, of integrated measures for carbon neutrality.

Biography
Riccardo M. Pulselli, architect, PhD in environmental sciences, is founder and president of Indaco2 - Indicators, Assessments and CO₂, a company focussed on environmental accounting applied to manufacturing and agricultural processes, buildings and building technologies, neighbourhoods and cities. He is author of City Out of Chaos. Urban Self-organization and Sustainability (WITpress 2009 – coauthored with Enzo Tiezzi), The Moving City (Laris 2011), The Rampant Garden (Edifir 2014 – coauthored with G Paolinelli and S Bastianoni). He has been visiting researcher at MIT (Boston, US), WUR (Wageningen, NL) and TU Delft (Delft, NL). He has conducted research, in collaboration with TU Delft, for assessing the effects, in terms of carbon footprint mitigation, of energy transition plans in European cities.

Title: ''Cost effective Heat-Transition'

By Folckert van der Molen; researcher Climate Air and Energy; PBL Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving

19 maart 2019
Folckert van der Molen is an energy and sustainability researcher at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. He started his career there after his studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences at Utrecht University, focusing on Economic Geography. Research areas include sustainable heating in the built environment and regional energy transition processes. Currently working towards facilitating the implementation of the goals for heating in the built environment from the national Climate Agreement on a municipality level in the Netherlands.

This presentation provides an overview of regional challenges in planning the heat-transition of the built environment and proposes methods for solving these challenges. Lessons are drawn from a recent regional case-study conducted in the Drechtsteden region. This study shows how national policy van be translated to a region and municipality level through an analysis of technical and economic solutions for reducing the demand for natural gas. In this case study the researchers participated in a regional decision-making process. Some meta-conclusions can be drawn about effective stakeholder participation and implications for national policy.

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Title: ’Cool heat grids’  for sustainable urban energy systems

By Sabine Jansen; Assistant Professor faculty of Architecture and the built environment

15 January 2019
This lunch lecture presents ongoing projects on (ultra) low temperature heat grids for sustainable urban or neighbourhood energy systems, as one of the sustainable alternatives for heating with natural gas.

In the built environment, many heat sources are available at temperatures between 15 and 30 degrees, such as for example waste water, surface water, cooling from supermarkets or datacentres, and solar thermal energy. Also, the heating and cooling demand of buildings exist in this temperature range, or can make use of these low temperature sources by upgrading the heat with a heat pump.  In this lecture two projects on this topic are presented. The ‘KoWaNet’ project (www.kowanet.nl) aims at developing smart thermal heat grids that intelligently connect all these sources and demands. These smart and open ‘cool heat grids’ will optimally connect all users – producers, consumers and those that do both – in order to efficiently deliver sustainable, economic and secure heat or cold to its customers. The second – recently granted - project is on low temperature feed-in solar heat grids. This energy concept will be briefly explained and the influence of the insulation level of the connected buildings will be discussed.

Sabine Jansen works as assistant professor at the faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology since 2014. She is involved in education on sustainable energy systems as well as various research projects related to the energy transition for the built environment. She graduated from the same faculty in 2002.  After several years of experience at various engineering consultancies, she received her PhD degree in 2013 on the application of the exergy concept to energy systems in the built environment.

At the moment she focuses on two research topics:  bringing innovative and future-proof energy solutions into practice, and integrating circularity into the challenge of the energy transition, which is actually a 'resource transition'.

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Title: ‘Pushing design boundaries to optimize the energy performance in the built environment’

By Cristina Jurado López – ABT; Energy specialist in the built environment

18 December 2018
At ABT we push the boundaries of innovative and integrated design creating tomorrow’s world today. Our approach is one of think-act, from sketch to prototype. We develop ideas with designers, create integral engineering solutions and deliver results. Our engineers master the fields of structural design, civil engineering, executive architecture, building physics, MEP and energy.

In our mission of creating tomorrow’s world today we develop integral building designs. ABT energy team focuses on implementing integral active and passive design strategies to solve tomorrow’s energy challenges in the Dutch built environment. During this presentation, ABT will give an overview of projects where these architectural and engineering strategies were implemented to optimize energy performance and interact with neighbouring (Smart Energy-) buildings.

Christina is an energy specialist and passionate about solving future energy challenges in the built environment

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Title 'Smart Energy Services on TOON'

By Stephen Galsworthy – Head of Data Science, Quby

20 November 2018
Quby is the creator and provider of Toon, a leading European smart home platform which is sold in the Netherlands via Eneco. We enable Toon users to control and monitor their homes using both an in-home display and app. As a data driven company, we use AI and machine learning to generate actionable insights for our end users. Using the data we collect via our IoT devices we have introduced multiple data driven services, including an energy waste checker and a boiler monitoring service.

In this talk, Stephen will describe how Quby has developed services for the Toon platform, and will show multiple use cases relating to the connected home. We’ll take a look at how Deep Learning algorithms are used to detect inefficient appliances from electricity meter data and how streaming algorithms allow users to be alerted to anomalies with their heating systems in near real-time. Stephen will share the experiences from the Data Science and Data Engineering teams at Quby with bringing data science algorithms from R&D to production and the lessons learned in offering multiple data driven services to hundreds of thousands of users on a daily basis.

Stephen Galsworthy is the Head of Data Science at Quby, the creator and provider of Toon, a leading European smart home platform. In this role, he is responsible for the development of data driven services for residential customers and partners such as utilities and insurance providers. Stephen holds both a Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Mathematics from Oxford University and has been leading Data Science teams since 2011.

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Title 'Transforming the household heat demand; impact and role for the DSO'
By Vincent Dekker - Senior Consultant Strategie & Innovatie, Liander, Assetmanagement Strategie & Innovatie

16 October 2018
Abstract: In order to achieve the climate goals, the built environment must become sustainable. We have to move away from natural gas to heat our homes. This transition has a significant effect on the energy infrastructure of the network managers.
This lecture will explain the effects and the immediat impact. We will zoom in on the role of the network operator in this transition and a tool  will be demonstrated in which the heating solutions per district are visualized.

Vincent has a master in astronomy. At Liander his scope is: neutron stars, magnetars, heat pumps, heat storage,superconductivity and data analysis.

Watch the presentation slides here
Watch the recordings of the lecture here