High Tech Campus Eindhoven has set itself an ambitious goal: become the most #SustainableCampus in Europe. This is how we are going to do it.
Paul van Son is Innovation Manager at High Tech Campus Eindhoven and the author of this blog.
There has never been so much attention on issues such as global warming and the growing population. These phenomena come with huge societal and environmental challenges. Technology and innovation can play an important role in solving the problems the world faces.
As a central hotspots for technological innovations in Europe, we strongly feel the responsibility to take the lead in sustainability. We want to become the most sustainable campus in Europe.
In this first post about our project #SustainableCampus, I want to tell you where we are today, what we will be working on in the coming years and how you can be part of it!
So first things first. How do you measure a sustainable campus? There is no such thing as a blueprint for sustainable campuses... yet. We intend to develop it and set the benchmark ourselves.
We defined our roadmap to become the most sustainable campus in Europe. We made it our responsibility, together with suppliers and tenants, and we hope this inspires other campuses around the world to do the same!
To achieve these lofty goals, we need a lot of partners. We started by establishing a Sustainability Board. The board includes people working on sustainable development within their companies, but all from a different angle.
Together we've identified the topics on which we will focus our efforts. Now we want to build a movement together with our suppliers, partners and the community on the Campus. Time for action!
Mention 'sustainability', and energy is probably one of the first topics that comes to mind. Of course, energy is a key part of our roadmap. These are just two KPIs we've set ourselves on this topic:
Ambitious? Yes. So no time to lose: we start with installing 30.000 solar panels on the roofs of all Campus buildings in January!
This is as a great kickstart to our ambitions, but of course sustainability is much broader than just energy. To be more precise: energy is just one of the nine building blocks in our sustainability strategy.
Here's what the blueprint of our strategy looks like (text continues below picture):
As you can see in the blueprint, we've identified three strategic pillars on which we build initiatives:
Each pillar embraces some of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and has three sub categories on which we're running projects with our partners. And we want you to become part of the sustainability movement!
In the following three blogs we'll dive deeper into each strategic pillar. We will share important initiatives already in place and what our ambitions are. Stay tuned!