A few weeks ago I attended an event with the title "If I were Queen of the Netherlands ...". Eleven women told the audience what they would do/change if they were Queen of the Netherlands and had the power to make use of that position to make a difference.
One of the speakers was Niki Kringos who is an Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology. She runs a project with the objective to make asphalt more environmentally friendly, if only because at a certain point in future we will run out of a number of (not so environmentally-friendly) inputs necessary to produce asphalt. She gave a very interesting "asphalt for dummies" presentation. You can check out that presentation for yourself by clicking here (even as I know that some of you do not want to hear ANYTHING more about asphalt :-) She and her team hope to have a proto-type of this asphalt developed by 2015.
Besides the fact that I applaud the initiative and thought Niki's presentation was inspiring, I was reminded of asphalt yesterday when we went to see my parents, who live at an almost 2 hour drive from where I live, to celebrate my sister's birthday (it would be 3.5 hours by train and we wanted to go to and from in one day, hence the car ... and we were four in the car!). As I am currently interested in everything environment and sustainable, I suddenly wondered out loud during the drive why we could not build roads with built-in solar panels (I was thinking about the heath reflecting from the black asphalt when the sun shines on it) to which my brother-in-law answered that they are already developing that in the Netherlands for biking paths ... I know, it sounds far-fetched, but hey, with technology everything eventually might be possible.
So this is the idea. TNO, which is a Dutch independent research organization focusing on sustainable innovations, has joined hands with two companies and the province of North-Holland to develop a biking path that doubles as solar panel, called "Solaroad". As there is about 137,000 kilometer of roads in the Netherlands alone such an initiative, if it works, could produce a lot of green energy. And imagine how easy it would be to charge your (future) electric car along those roads! Now critics have already brought in lots of arguments why this would not work, one being that my country is not very sunny .... which, unfortunately, is true. Maybe it might work better in more sunny countries but I guess someone has to take the first step of wanting to invest in developing the technology. So I am glad they do! If you want to read more, check here This page gives a short overview of how and what. They hope to have the first bike path ready in 2012.
As I was thinking about these innovative people, I was reminded of the last weeks of demonstrations in Tunis and Egypt and how that first step of deciding that you want something to change is so important (as I also wrote last week). As with the asphalt, the solaroad, and Tunesian and Egyptian reforms, we have to wait and see if that change can really be brought about. But there is no success without trying! I am thus looking forward to following these and other revolutionary ideas in the coming years.
Have a great week and happy Valentine's Day!
Rose
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