Research | Sustainability at the University of Twente

Welcoming All Impactful Contributions

At the Climate Centre, we embrace all impactful contributions made by UT co-workers to address the challenges posed by climate change. Together, we are building a community. We are defining certain challenges and programmes that highlight the Geo-Techno-Social approach and demonstrate its added value, and we strive to distinguish UT by further developing it. As we continue to develop our agenda at the Climate Centre, we investigate climate mitigation and adaptation measures to tackle the challenges presented by climate change, such as decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing infrastructure and policies to adapt to varying climate conditions.

UT leverages the knowledge and expertise of all faculties, which offer a diverse array of geological, technological, and social disciplines. Experts worldwide recognize UT's contribution to climate goals, especially our distinctive approach of combining these three areas of knowledge.

Resilience to Water Extremes

We leverage UT expertise to support drought resilience through the Geo-Techno-Social approach by monitoring and modelling key physical systems such as water, soil, vegetation, and atmosphere, building upon the expertise available in the Flow for Future cluster. We develop technical solutions that improve system resilience and align with individual behaviours and interests. We foster multi-actor collaboration and governance systems to promote behavioural change, collaboration, governance instruments, and business models that enhance drought resilience.

Carbon Dioxide Removal

It is increasingly clear that besides reducing CO2 emissions through energy transitions, carbon dioxide removal techniques (CDR) are vital to reaching global net-zero emissions by 2050. CDR requires a multidisciplinary approach, including ethical and societal considerations, geo-observation, and technical optimization of direct air capture. UT leads research on CDR to evaluate the availability and composition of olivine mines and investigate industrial processes for accelerated olivine weathering on a large scale.

Circular economy

By 2050, the Netherlands aims to be a fully circular economy. All products and raw materials will then be continuously reused. Waste no longer exists in such a system. Is something broken? We’ll repair it until that’s no longer possible. Then the product is recycled or converted into new raw materials. Welcome to the future of economic sustainability: the circular economy.

To achieve these ambitious plans, we need innovative solutions. The University of Twente is working with industry and policymakers to find these solutions. We need to invent new separation technologies, companies need to cooperate in new ways and products need to last longer. We need a solution for every waste stream.

Energy storage

Embedding firm principles of sustainability in next-generation battery designs, manufacturing processes, and their use is an absolute must for climate goals. Research at the UT analyzes environmental impacts and material sourcing, as well as energy density, charge rate, cycle life, and safety factors when evaluating materials for next-generation cell and pack designs.

Environmental impact and energy efficiency are also used as starting points for design parameters in manufacturing processes, while advancements in cyber-physical production systems are leveraged to decarbonize the industry. And sustainability acts as a main driver for (smart) applications and the use of batteries to combat climate impacts. This leads to real sustainable cross-disciplinary collaboration between disciplines of material science, sustainable production, circularity, artificial intelligence, and power electronics.

Renewable energy sources

Society needs to rapidly decarbonize to avoid planetary-scale ecological and societal disasters. By far, energy use is the largest CO₂ emissions sector, which clearly identifies a key component to solving the climate crisis: generate energy from (local) renewable resources. This also answers the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7, making energy clean and affordable. In many places all over the world, photovoltaics (solar panels) are the cheapest source of electricity.

The Netherlands has established itself as a thriving ecosystem for industry and academic researchers developing novel solar energy solutions, and can now boast as having the highest amount of solar installed per capita in Europe (2022-2023). Solar Centre Twente is a Centre of Expertise aimed at bringing together researchers to better connect interdisciplinary research between faculties, UT-wide education and (inter)national collaboration on the topic of solar energy. We focus on:

Materials science for solar energy conversion, including criticality of materials & sustainability considerations
Smart system integration and optimization
Designing improved product-service combinations, including societal embedding and socio-techno perspectives

Planetary Health

Planetary health is a new field of interdisciplinary research dealing with the effects of global environmental change on human health. It is not limited to understanding the effects of global environmental change on health, but it also aims to understand the drivers of global environmental change, particularly the effects of healthcare itself on the global environment, and the policies that can avert global environmental change and its related health effects. In view of the lack of sustainable product supply, innovation in sustainable product design and recycling techniques is urgently needed. Furthermore, knowledge development plays an important role in the ability to scale up sustainability and sustainable device use.

More research and education is needed on the environmental impact of certain procedures and medical devices, which considers the entire life cycle and several aspects of environmental impact. Implementation research is also needed into sustainable devices or processes, which includes an assessment of effectiveness, safety and behaviour. In addition, methods that provide insight into aspects of sustainability and hidden costs of devices can make an important contribution. By making even better use of the available knowledge at the UT and our established innovative ecosystem, we are in the unique position to contribute to these planetary health challenges.

Sustainable industry

Manufacturing value chains are significant contributors to climate-relevant global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. With responsibility for approximately a third of total emissions, it is actually the sector with the highest impact even before agriculture, buildings, and transport. Much of the emissions are due to the energy demand which is strongly (but not only) driven by key material-related value chains such as iron/steel, plastics, cement or aluminium.

Sustainable industry is a crucial topic, and the University of Twente is taking steps towards decarbonization through various activities related to energy and material efficiency in industrial processes and systems, as well as a substitution to alternative, renewable resources.

Sustainable heating and cooling

Providing a sustainable way to meet the demand for heat and cold in residential climatization as well as in industry is the major challenge as more than 45% of CO2 emissions are associated with these processes. Less fossil-fuel-intense technologies involve the utilization of renewable energy carriers, directly or by heat pump systems as well as the utilization of waste heat in smart heat distribution networks. Furthermore, the storage of heat is a major issue. UT leads research on component level (fuel cell, thermal energy storage, heat pump systems) as well as system design.

Linking Research with UT Faculties and Institutes

The Climate Centre builds on the knowledge and expertise available in research groups, faculties, and institutes at UT, including:

Connecting with the Dutch Climate Research Initiative (KIN)

Active participation in the KIN enables UT to pursue impactful collaboration nationwide. The UT Climate Centre aims to contribute to the three interconnected tracks of KIN, namely:

A national programme of integral climate research,
A climate pact,
A national centre

Visit the Dutch Climate Research Initiative (KIN) website

The UT Climate Centre participates in the foreseen KIN Programme, and we collaborate on developing climate-friendly and climate-resilient societies' system transitions. Our cross-disciplinary approach integrates socio, geo, and techno sciences, incorporates system transition aspects, and promotes living labs, such as LILa and FiDETT. Above all, we believe that it is crucial to act swiftly and without delay because climate change demands nothing less.