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Research

One of our missions is to foster the development of research, teaching and learning opportunities for students, faculty and staff to raise awareness about the interconnection between environmental, social, economic and equity aspects, and facilitate their assuming individual and collective responsibilities and propose solutions for such complex issues where they can effect change.

This requires problem-centred and solution-seeking approaches to research and teaching, new participatory teaching methods, and research approaches that transcend disciplines.

Three research projects relating to sustainable campus development are taking centre stage in 2011:

1. Sustainable Transport

Currently, the transport sector is responsible for 34 % of the Luxembourg Carbon footprint. Sustainable transport is one of the most serious challenges in the planning of the new campus in the Cité des Sciences.

It will require an integrated approach to planning that considers implications across a range of policy sectors, and that relies on participation of diverse stakeholders and future users. The main challenge we face is the high level of individual car use for daily commutes of over 30 km, each user emitting over 2t CO2 per year. The Sustainable Development Cell together with UL Geography researchers are jointly developing a UL policy on sustainable transport. policy. The draft policy proposes a wide range of concrete measures and targets leading to a reduction of automotive km per person, and fostering public transport and low impact alternatives such as walking and bicycling for the commute to the University by students and staff. The public research centres CEPS and Henri Tudor have joined the project. Priorities for implementation and targets will now be defined in a participatory process. A Travel Survey is being developed to estimate the CO2 emissions related to transportation, to refine the policy recommendations, and to serve as a tool to monitor the progress of implementation over time. Measures already adopted in view of reducing transport based CO2 emissions include a student pass for public transport at reduced price; and rules for business related travel, declaring that for distances of less than 500 km, 1st class train tickets will be reimbursed, while air travel for under 500 km will not be funded at all. Further, car rental expenses will only be reimbursed if the distance is longer than 100km and if transport was shared with at least one more person.

Overview on the development of a policy on a Sustainable Transport for the UL.pdf 65.09 kB
Contact: Dr Ariane König

2. Sustainable ICT

We are developing together with students a student-led interdisciplinary research project towards attaining Carbon-neutral ICT operations, which counts towards the students’ degrees. The project has three research strands:

a) To reduce energy consumption from our ICT equipment and operations:Students from the Bachelor or Masters in Information and Computer Science, and a PhD student and Postdoc team from the UL Green ICT project have started to work together to plan and implement measures to increase energy efficiency.
b) To develop a monitoring system for ICT-related energy consumption:Students from the Masters in Sustainable Development – Energy and from the Bachelor in Engineering will develop and implement a system to continually measure, record, analyse and display energy consumption from our ICT operations.
c) To design and implement a business model for renewable energy from PV:Students from the Masters in Entrepreneurship and Innovation will develop a business model to rent out roof space on Kirchberg to a University-member or citizen’s group that invests in photovoltaïc cells and sells the renewable energy output back to the University for its ICT operations (indirectly through involvement of the grid-energy provider if need be). A transportable PV system would be purchased that could be transferred to Campus Belval at the time of the move.

Research project: Green IT

Sustainable ICT at University of Luxembourg.pdf 971.31 kB
http://greenit.gforge.uni.lu
Contact: Pascal Bouvry

3. Renewable Energy

The Cell for Sustainable Development fostered the creation of a master thesis on the topic "Cost and industry analysis for thin solar cell technology", which was supervised by Prof. Sten Södermann and Prof. Susanne Siebentritt, University of Luxembourg. The thesis focusses on the latest achievements in thin solar cell technology.

The solar cell technology uses the energy of the sun and converts it into electricity directly. The sunlight owns its energy in small particles call photons, and the aim of the cell is to grasp the energy through a semiconductor material, this energy allows electrons to move, and this movement of electron is called electricity. As a reference, sunlight can provide 1000W per square meter; however, it is impossible to have a device with a 100% efficiency. To have a better performance, a solar panel is made of several small solar cells connected in series. The more common type of solar cell produces are called silicon solar cell, but now, new thin film solar cell are coming up, and have a promising future.

Research project: Photovoltaics