Safeguarding the necessities of life
“Sustainability” is the term on everyone's lips these days – but it is much more than just a buzzword. At its core, it raises existential questions for humans and the environment. Read on to find out what “sustainable” means at ETH Zurich and how the university is contributing to society in this area.
Ensuring food security, supplying energy, tackling climate change. The human race is facing a range of complex challenges. Sustainable development provides the solution. ETH Zurich regards the promotion of sustainable development as both a performance mandate and a standard to live up to. But how can our university put this complex and abstract concept into practice and bring it into the public consciousness?
Exploiting synergies
“By focusing on our core competencies,” says Reto Knutti, climate physicist and sustainability delegate for ETH Zurich. By which he means optimising the use of research, teaching and the university campus and maintaining a dialogue with the public.
To take one example: students are working together with researchers to study how environmentally friendly menus are received in the ETH canteens and whether diners are receptive to information on the subject. The findings feed into the recently launched Climate Programme. As part of the programme, the caterers are committing to concrete targets in order to ensure that campus catering is sustainable. The joint project between ETH Sustainability and the World Food System Center (WFSC) serves as a model for other organisations to follow. The Washington Post even reported on it.
For Knutti, this is an example of how ETH Zurich is integrating sustainability into day-to-day life: “It shows how academia, education and campus operations can benefit from one another”.
System knowledge and technical know-how
Research, of course, provides the foundation for all sustainability activities. Numerous ETH departments and competence centres are working on principles, know-how and solutions relating to sustainability topics. The spectrum ranges from natural resources to the towns of the future, the world's food supplies, new forms of energy and climate change. This requires a solid foundation of system knowledge. It is no surprise that ETH experts are supporting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or helping to implement the Energy Strategy 2050 of the Swiss Federal Council.
ETH is heavily involved in the energy sector in particular and is heading up three of the eight Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCER) – those specialising in the supply of electricity, the efficiency of industrial processes and mobility. As energy systems are becoming increasingly decentralised, there is a need for stable control systems for power grids, energy storage devices and new business models. At the Energy Science Center (ESC), specialists in engineering sciences, natural sciences and social sciences are investigating the best ways to produce renewable energy sources and integrate them into the electricity infrastructure.
Production processes and forecasts
Robust, environmentally friendly production systems also play a central role in global food security. At the World Food System Center, agricultural scientists and nutritionists are developing new ways of supplying the world's growing population with high-quality food while reducing the use of pesticides and resources. These approaches involve biological cultivation methods and greater crop diversity alongside modern plant breeding and digital assistance systems.
ETH researchers are also studying how climate change affects food systems, ecology and the economy. In order to produce forecasts regarding the climate and its consequences for society, robust simulations are required. The Center for Climate Systems Modelling (C2SM) brings together expertise in climate modelling from various sources. MeteoSwiss, Empa, WSL and Agroscope are all involved in the network platform as well. Their shared goal is to strengthen the predictive skill of climate models on time scales from months to centuries.
Consistency within our own sphere
Credibility requires consistency in word and deed. In order to live up to this standard, ETH has a staff unit dedicated to sustainability. ETH Sustainability reports directly to the President, brings together all of the key players and initiates projects. The university campus, with its research, teaching and operations activities, provides an ideal testing ground: “The campus allows us to test out new technologies as well as social and economic aspects of sustainability and integrate them into everyday life,” says director Christine Bratrich.
A good example is the House of Natural Resources, which is made from hardwood and is used for research, teaching and demonstration purposes. ETH is not afraid to deal with thorny issues and does not shy away from tackling conflicting goals, as demonstrated by the Mobility Platform's air travel project which is aiming to reduce CO2 emissions from air travel without restricting employees.
Values to bring about change
Last but not least, the university's teaching provides young people with the ethical values, critical attitude and intellectual tools they need to act responsibly in the future. For over 30 years, the Environmental Science degree programme has been teaching methods for understanding environmental systems as a whole. Today the university offers a wide range of Master's programmes which aim to produce accomplished environmental engineers, spatial planners and experts in energy policy or corporate sustainability. There are also numerous opportunities for further training.
A relatively new initiative which is having a huge impact is ETH Week. This project is organised by ETH Sustainability together with different units each time. Students develop possible solutions to social challenges and learn to think creatively with an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural perspective. If that doesn't bring sustainability into the public consciousness, what will?
This text is from the current issue of the magazine "life".
10 years of ETH Sustainability
In order to increase ETH's contribution to sustainable development, the Executive Board set up the ETH Sustainability staff unit in 2008. Since then, this unit has been bringing together numerous key players and initiatives from the fields of research, teaching and campus development and initiating its own projects in order to integrate the principle of sustainability into the university's decisions and actions. ETH Sustainability produces regular reports on ETH Zurich's sustainability performance from an economic, social and ecological perspective