Created by Jesper

Column week 1                                                                                                        Author: Jesper Goorden Today was the kick-off meeting of the course Engineering for Sustainable Development. Me and 31 (or 35?) other students from different faculties will work together in this course to eventually come up with a sustainable design for the island of Texel. In this…

  When I saw the news this week I was again very disappointed in our governmental policy regarding sustainability. At first I could not believe this, but it happens to be that because of a certain subsidy it is now financially attractive to replace a good working windmill by a newer one. These “old” windmills are technically in perfect state and could easily work for at least 15 more years, but…

New energy for Energyplan Texel 2030 This is a research based report and can be characterized as a feasibility study for a self-sufficient energy system on Texel in 2030. The article maps the current energy demand of the island specified in different sectors, as well as the expected figures in 2030. Furthermore some basic energy-demand reducing principles are stated, but these are mainly…

This week it was my group’s turn to do the literature review. I did the review on the Dutch report about a self-sustaining energy plan for Texel in 2030. The report concluded that a fully self-sustaining energy system on Texel is not feasible in 2030 with the current state of technology unless 2/3 of the energy needs would be generated by windmills. I think this conclusion is a bit short-sighted…

This week’s column supposed to be a follow-up of my previous column. In this previous column I wondered in which subsystem the built environment is addressed because I believe there’s a huge potential for multiple subsystems here. Because of my own interest in sustainable innovations in the built environment I wanted to share some ideas regarding the design for Texel. As I explained in my…

Doing the research for the water-cycle on Texel I found out that al lot of efforts are needed to close the water cycle on the island. The island currently depends on 2 pipelines that are connected to the mainland for its drinking water supply and after the water is used and cleaned it is released into the ditch system that leads to the sea. This means that all water entering the island ends up in…

Only 2 weeks to go until we’ll be heading for Texel. I’m really curious if we can succeed in designing a self-sustaining socio-technical system by the end of the week and what the Tesselaars will think of our proposals. This week I was interested to see if something similar has already been done elsewhere. I remembered that I once read an article about a self-sustainable Danish island, which made…

This is the interview we did for the water-cycle group during the visit on Texel. We spoke with Nico Tessel, an employee of the HHNK on Texel. Nico is responsible for the water management & treatment on the island and we met him on the water treatment plant Everstekoog were we also had an interesting guiding tour. 1. What is your current function within the HHNK and for how long do you have this…

What a week! The stay on the island has really changed my perception of Texel and the way Tesselaars think and act. Besides the conversations with the Tesselaars on Monday evening, the visit at the water treatment plant was the real eye-opener for me. I came to the Island with the idea to improve the sub-system with all kinds of technical innovations. But after seeing the treatment plant I had…