Green light for Netherlands’ sustainability research

SPOTLIGHT ON THE NETHERLANDS

The Netherlands is using its expertise in tech and agriculture to punch above its weight in the clean-tech revolution.

Our students want to work in professions that will help to build a more sustainable world. Sascha Kersten, University of Twente

ONE DAY in the not-too-distant future you may be tucking into a worm burger, freshly grilled on a barbecue powered by pig manure-derived fuel. And if you do, there's a good chance that the technologies behind your sustainable meal will have been developed in the Netherlands.

The thought of chowing down on creepy crawlies may not sound too appealing, but seeing that worm burger as an environmentally friendly version of your usual fast food snack might make it a little more palatable: it could be part of the solution to the planet's burgeoning population and declining availability of agricultural land.

Those are the hopes of researchers all over the Netherlands, where sustainability research is at the top of the agenda of universities, research institutes, companies and the government. Building on a strong history of high-tech industry and high-density agriculture, the Netherlands is rapidly applying its expertise and infrastructure to revolutionising the way we feed and power the planet.

“The Netherlands already has the world's highest productivity in the agrifood business in terms of production per acre,” says Toine Timmermans, from Top Institute (TI) Food and Nutrition in Wageningen. The Netherlands may be one of the smallest countries in the European Union, but more than half of its four million hectares of land is used for agricultural purposes, and it is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products, after the United States. “Our challenge now is how to do that in a more sustainable way,” Timmermans says.

Making alternatives a reality

Scientists at Wageningen University and Research Centre (UR) are working on one innovative solution: plant- and insect-derived meat alternatives.

The town of Wageningen is situated at the heart of the country's ‘Food Valley’, an area dense in food companies and research organisations. This makes it ideal for testing out novel foodstuffs, with companies such as Nizo — which operates Europe's largest pilot plant for food production — on the doorstep.

In Driebergen in the middle of the country, researchers at the Louis Bolk Institute are also focused on less resource-intensive food production. They are showing Dutch farmers how techniques developed for organic farming can provide economically-viable options for conventional agriculture. “We're showing them that techniques like planting clover in fields to get extra nitrogen in plants and soil can be just as effective as using artificial fertilizers,” says institute researcher Jan-Paul Wagenaar.

An inevitable byproduct of such a large agricultural sector is waste. “The Netherlands has more pigs than people,” says Sascha Kersten, at the University of Twente. Kersten, who works on developing new biofuels, sees the waste as a resource to be tapped, rather than a problem. Most of the pig waste, and that derived from many other agricultural processes, is biomass — organic material such as manure and woodchips that can be converted into heat, fuel and chemicals. “Our research focuses on making products that are currently made from fossil fuels from biomass instead,” he says.

Efforts don't stop with solid waste. Located in Leeuwarden near the northeastern coast of the Netherlands, Wetsus, a centre of excellence for sustainable water technology, brings together universities and companies across Europe in order to develop sustainable ways to treat waste water.

Innovation through collaboration

Working with companies to put new technologies into practice is one of the draws of sustainability research, says Kersten. The University of Twente works in close collaboration with large companies such as Shell and DSM, a Dutch life science and materials sciences firm. “When we survey our first year students in chemistry or chemical engineering, often their primary reason for choosing these topics is that they want to work in professions that will help to build a more sustainable world,” he says.

This goal is echoed by Hester Bijl, chair of the Delft Energy Initiative, at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) which stimulates interdisciplinary partnerships between the university's 700 energy researchers and business.

One such partnership is helping to build the reputation of the Netherlands as one of Europe's leaders in wind energy production. TU Delft is engaged in FLOW, a large scale project to build wind farms far off the shore, in order to avoid shipping routes and other obstacles. The initiative is a collaboration with the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), the largest energy research institute in the country, and should help the Dutch government meet its target of 6000MW of offshore wind energy capacity to be installed in the Netherlands by 2020.

The newly constructed Bernoulliborg building houses a section of the science department of the University of Groningen. The city is part of the ‘Energy Valley’ of the Netherlands. Credit: UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN

Fusion on many levels

The Netherlands’ version of Silicon Valley, the so-called Brainport Eindhoven region — an area concentrated in high-technology research — is also turning its attention to sustainable technologies. The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), which employs around 4000 people in the area, is spearheading the Solliance research cluster, a cooperation which brings together 250 researchers in the Eindhoven area who are working on the development of thin-film photovoltaic cells for harnessing solar energy.

Wind and solar may be the most obvious options in alternative energy research, but TU Eindhoven is also thinking beyond these. The university, which has named energy as one of its top three research foci, is using its technical prowess to investigate the potential of nuclear fusion as an energy source.

Niek Lopes Cardozo, head of the fusion science programme, wants to make the university an international centre for fusion education. The physics, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering departments have developed a new two-year Masters course in fusion science, which Lopes Cardozo describes as “unique in the world.”

The energy generation

In the far north of the country, the Groningen Energy and Sustainability Programme (GESP), part of the University of Groningen, also offers a cross-disciplinary educational environment, with the aim of educating highly-employable graduates. “Interdisciplinary research is what trains people well and makes them versatile,” says Harro Meijer, a greenhouse gas scientist at the University of Groningen.

Groningen is located in the ‘Energy Valley’ of the Netherlands, an area packed with infrastructure for natural gas exploitation — infrastructure which many scientists hope to see put into use for deriving and supplying renewable energy. Capitalising on the local set-up, the University of Groningen has recently teamed up with the Hanze University of Applied Sciences to form the Energy Academy Europe, an international centre of excellence for energy education, research and innovation, which has just launched. “The energy industry is telling us that they want people with sound basic knowledge across the industry – even in their managerial streams,” says Meijer. “At the Energy Academy, we will educate everyone from skilled technicians to postdoctoral researchers to managers."

Credit: RATHENAU INSTITUTE

Plastic from sugars

Businesses are also coming up with their own innovative clean-tech solutions. “We have a rule that each new product we develop should have a lower environmental footprint than the last,” says Maarten van de Graaf, a biotechnologist at DSM. For instance, his team is currently developing bio-based materials that are made by fermenting sugars. These can then be used to make polymers and other products that in turn can make the manufacture of items like shoes, paint and packaging more sustainable. “We can already make similar materials from chemical sources,” he says, “but sugars are a renewable starting material.” This corporate attitude has secured the company top ranking on the international Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the chemical sector for six out of the past nine years.

Dutch renewable chemicals firm Avantium, which was this year listed in the Global Cleantech 100 list of the top 100 private companies in clean technology for the third year a row, is working in partnership with Coca-Cola and Danone to develop 100% plant-based soft drink bottles using PEF — the company's innovative alternative to the chemically-derived plastic PET.

Helping hand

Sustainability research in academia and industry should also be given a boost by government initiatives. In September 2011 the Dutch government announced an overhaul of its research funding policy, with the aim of increasing the country's spending on research and development. At 1.8% of GDP at the end of 2011, it is well below that of its northern European neighbours, but the government wants it to rise to 2.5% of GDP by 2020. The scheme identified nine areas that are key to the Dutch economy – including energy, water, food agriculture, and high-technology materials and systems. As part of this plan, some government research subsidies will be channeled into tax breaks and incentives for businesses which invest in research and development in these areas.

Eindhoven University has named energy as one of its top three areas of focus for research.

Some Dutch scientists regard the scheme, which they say places industry in a strong position to set research agendas, somewhat cautiously. But the policy could be a promising one for the sustainability sector. “The Netherlands has historically lagged behind some of its European neighbours in terms of rolling out renewable energy technologies,” says solar-cell scientist Rene Janssen from TU Eindhoven. “Encouraging more industry involvement, if it is combined with a strong fundamental research program, could give the sector a real boost."

Provincial governments are also putting a major focus on sustainability. The Overijssel province government, for example, recently announced a €250 million (US$324 million) fund for low-interest loans and investments which might help the province to generate 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

“This sustainability push from local governments is a new direction for the Netherlands,” says Kersten from the University of Twente, which is in Overijssel province. “They want to create jobs in the region and help achieve local goals in reducing CC2 emissions. They're specific goals for small areas, but I'm very optimistic it will lead to good R&D outcomes too,” he says.

Timmermans is also optimistic that the push from government should be a boon for the agrifood industry. Whereas sustainability has gone from being an issue that companies used primarily for public image purposes a decade ago, it is now a genuine part of their business plans he says: “sustainability is now part of their licence to exist.”