TU Delft invests a hundred million euros to make campus more sustainable

TU Delft is going to invest substantially in making its campus more sustainable. Over the next few years, the university will work towards a CO₂-neutral, circular, and climate-adaptive campus, with a focus on improving biodiversity and quality of life, writes the university in a press release.

Throughout the campus, experiments will be carried out to explore new sustainable techniques and processes. Many of the innovations are related to the energy transition. Part of the campus will have a heat network that will allow heat from cooling processes to be stored in the ground and used to heat other facilities.

Part of the sustainability budget is spent on facilitating innovations. Jaco van Noppen, Director Campus Real Estate & Facility Management: “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.” TU Delft is thus putting its previously published Sustainable TU Delft – vision, ambition & action plan into practice.

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Fit for the future

TU Delft focuses on all aspects that affect climate and environment: buildings, energy system, procurement, waste management, mobility, food, etc. Nature is included too, as work is being done to improve biodiversity and make the campus climate-ready for 2050. Sustainability Coordinator Andy van den Dobbelsteen explains: “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.”

The goal of the project is that people in 2030 will study and work in a vibrant, green environment, in buildings that are heated by renewable sources. The menus on the campus will also change. Van den Dobbelsteen: “Restaurants will also offer healthy and tasty food that is mostly plant-based and partly produced on campus. Procurement will be based entirely on closed cycles.”

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