Creating opportunities to adapt to climate change through innovative ...

1. IntroductionThis project started during Xperiment, September 2009. Xperiment is a seven week programfrom the LEF Future center, an innovation platform in Rijkswaterstaat. Teams of studentsfrom different nationalities and educational backgrounds are asked to look at some ofRijkswaterstaat’s challenges for the future.Our team of four people focused on sustainable water level management at theNoordzeekanaal. At the end of that waterway, in IJmuiden, there is a large pumping station.In 2007, its energy costs were approximately €800,000. Rijkswaterstaat’s ambition is tomake it a truly energy neutral pumping station, and asked us for ideas on how to do this. Wefocused on two sides of the ‘energy neutral’ coin: generating energy from water, andconsuming less energy.There are many technologies for generating energy from water. One of them, Blue Energy,uses the potential difference between salt (sea) water and fresh water to generate energy.This technology was presented to us as problematic, because of its waste product. Duringthe process, the salt and fresh water mix, and the Blue Energy plant has an output ofbrackish water. Large amounts of brackish water can both cause recirculation issues (makingyour salt input water less salt, or your fresh input water less fresh) and ecological issues.In those first seven weeks, we developed a concept that aims to look at that brackish waternot as problematic waste, but as a resource. We then presented an overview of all the thingsthat you can do with brackish water, and this is only the beginning. Once we allow ourselvesto redefine ‘waste’, many things become possible.When it comes to consuming less energy, a lot of work had already been done. IJmuidennow operates with a decision support system (DSS, or BOS in Dutch) that advises operatorson when to pump. Its most innovative and essential feature now is that it takes the sea levelinto account, which results in a lot more discharging (free) and pumping during low tide (upto three times as cheap as pumping during high tide).We felt that there was room for more improvement, though, so we talked to a lot of expertsand compiled a list of possibilities, ranging from very simple technical changes to more outof-the-boxideas about feeding shipping information to the system to anticipate on.When the program ended, we felt that there was much more we could do with our ideas.Fortunately our supervisors, Marco Hofman from WINN (the water innovation department)and Hans Overbeek from Rijkswaterstaat Noord-Holland, agreed with that and asked us tostay on a little longer.“I was very interested in that next step, from vision to implementation design, and Ichallenged the students to work on that after Xperiment.” – Marco HofmanDuring the next three months, we elaborated on our ideas by testing them for feasibility andfinding partners for their implementation one day. We wanted to take this project one stepfurther, and enable the parties involved to actually start working on (parts of) it. In the nextchapters, you can read all about our ideas, results, and recommendations.2