Sustainability Videos & Lecture Series

Marta Hulley Friedman: Good afternoon, everyone. We're gonna get started. I think most of the people are in. My name is Marta Hulley Friedman and I'm the program manager for the Global Sustainability Solutions Center, a program of the Walton Sustainability Solution Initiatives, here at Global Institute of Sustainability. Before I introduce our guests today, I just want to briefly tell you about some of the wonderful events we have going on here at the GIOS.

There's actually three of them I'm supposed to tell you about. Next Monday from noon to 1:30, "Ethics and Sustainable Practices" speech; Tuesday, April 30th, from noon to 1:30, "Case Critical, the Navajo Generating Station, What Lies Ahead," and Thursday, May 2nd, again from noon to 1:30 in this room—all of them are in this room—"Is God Green? An Interfaith Response to Climate Change." No doubt, there will be food with all of those events. You're welcome to attend.

A brief introduction on the Global Sustainability Solutions Centers, we launched this journey about last year. The purpose is to establish three of such centers around the world in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, with the ambition to engage our students and faculty in solving sustainability challenges with partners worldwide, whether they are corporate partners, NGOs, or public institutions. We would like to engage globally and not only support those communities with solutions, but also have an opportunity for our faculty and students to learn from those communities.

We have launched our first center this past January. On January 22nd, we launched a partnership with the municipality of Haarlemmermeer in The Netherlands. Today, we're welcoming the delegation from their municipality, which includes municipality a alderman and support staff as well as some partners from the community. With that, I would like to introduce John Nederstigt, who is alderman for the municipality of Haarlemmermeer, The Netherlands, with a portfolio for sustainability, employment, youth, and education and Arthur Van Dyke, alderman, municipality of Haarlemmermeer portfolio, economic affairs, Schiphol Airport, and culture. Please join me in welcoming our speakers today. Thank you. [Applause].

[No audio].

Arthur van Dijk: How are you? Now you can hear, yeah, you're welcome. Good afternoon. My name is Arthur van Dijk, and here the movie will start. You have a short overview of our municipality.

Recording: [Music].

Arthur van Dijk: Dolly Parton. We have a reputation, sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the neighborhood of Amsterdam so that's our movie. [Laughter]. I don't have to say anything more. Thank you very much. But let me start saying thank you for the warm welcome we had Monday morning as a delegation from Amsterdam, coming here to ASU. I think you overwhelmed us with your welcome, and we feel really at home. I feel really at home. I know the way already here in this building, and we eat all day. So it's wonderful. Thank you very much. Everywhere where we appear, we get lunch, breakfast, and now you're eating as well.

Before I say something, John and I, we divided a little bit the presentation. I will tell you something about the position of in the Haarlemmermeer Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. We are part of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. I don't know if everybody knows something about the area, so I want to tell something about it. John will go in depth on Haarlemmermeer itself and what we are doing on sustainability.

Before that, perhaps I can introduce a little bit of the delegation because we are here, you could say, in a way of a triple helix, with education, knowledge institute, technology, private and public sector. Coert, he will leave us soon because he will fly home again. Coert is the, you could say, the private sector. He's a developer. We have the knowledge institute with us, Monique Ingus sitting there. We have the site officer of the Global Sustainability Solutions Center in The Netherlands, Folks and Debbie and Wendy, our personal assistants. They're both in charge of education and sustainability in our municipality.

Again, thank you very much for having us here, and I hope it isn't my last visit to Phoenix. It's warm. We heard that for you it's not so warm at the moment, but this morning when I walked out of the hotel, it really felt, okay, this is Phoenix. In The Netherlands at the moment, I think it's ten or eight degrees, perhaps something more.

This is a short overview, where we are talking about the area, the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. It's, you could say, not so big because the total inhabitants of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area is two and a half million. Compared with Phoenix, where four million people live, it's rather small. On the other hand, it's very dense, and that's an adventure because everything is nearby. When you go by car, by bicycle, of course, you also have a lot of bicycles. I saw that there were 73,500 students here and 16,500 bicycles so that feels very at home. We all have at least one or two bikes in The Netherlands.

On the other hand, when I tell something about the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, as you can see on the map, Europe is quite a large consumer market. Amsterdam and The Netherlands, it's in the heart of Europe you could say. When you zoom into Amsterdam, you can see we are in the heart of The Netherlands. The Netherlands, of course, has a history doing business, doing trade. For 400 years ago, we already had settlements in Korea, Japan, China, actually everywhere in the world, we were there.

We are born traders you could say. That's no coincidence because when you look at the position of The Netherlands, we are in the delta so via water we had wonderful routes towards the world. Still, at the moment, we still are a delta, but via rail, via air, water, and route, we still are one of the best-connected places in Europe to start with, but also to end with.

That's why over 200 multinational headquarters choose to establish in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. Of course, not only we have lots more of companies. For example, in Haarlemmermeer only we have approximately, I think, 10,000 different companies. They choose the position of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area was absolutely important for this 200 multinationals to choose for the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area.

I also think that they choose the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area because of the connectivity. I told you already the multimodal logistic routes gives us an advantage to a lot of other countries. We have wonderful hinterland connections, for example, to Germany. Germany is a very important economical country in Europe, of course, and we do a lot of business with them.

Also, France and all the other countries in Europe are very easily connected to Amsterdam. For example, to Paris you can take the fast train. In a few hours, you're there. We also have, of course, the harbor of Rotterdam. It's also one of the biggest harbors in Europe, and together with the airport Schiphol, you know it, but they are still prize-winning airports in Europe as the best, preferred airport in Europe. Together with the harbor of Amsterdam, we have a wonderful, yeah, that's a wonderful position. Oh, it's going too quickly.

Although we have a small consumer market, in The Netherlands ourselves, when you look to Europe, within 1300 kilometers we have 350 million consumers so it's a very interesting starting point to do business in Europe. I think that's also one of the benefits we have, combined with excellent connections, efficient business travel, connecting socially.

When you take that all in account, you could say Amsterdam, the Amsterdam region, together with Rotterdam Airport, gives us a benefit to a lot of other European countries. But nowadays, it's not, how do you say it, that common that it will be also in future, so we also invest in new innovations, but also in sustainable ways of doing business with other countries. For example, we have a lot of inland waterways, and we use them with barge to ship containers from Rotterdam to Amsterdam instead of using the road. That's cheaper, but it's also more sustainable you could say.

I think that's one of the reasons we are here and John will explain it later on because we have a lot of programs in trying to be more sustainable than we are at the moment. Especially in our region and our municipality, we try to be frontrunners in a lot of sustainable issues. That's why our region is in reach of a lot of new markets, but the strange thing is that also we, ourselves, are also, you could say, a testing new market because a lot of companies try new stuff in the Amsterdam region, in The Netherlands. When it succeeds in The Netherlands, you could say it succeeds in the rest of the world. It's very strange, but it has something to do, I think, with our mind shift in being traders and trying to be a little bit frontrunners.

What you can also see here is that the multimodal approach of The Netherlands is also based upon—we have an airport. We have seaports. I was already telling you, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. We have a Green Port. The Green Port is the largest flower auction in the world. It's nearby the Amsterdam region. We have the data for it, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange. I don't know if you know it, but we have the biggest internet exchange of the world. All the transatlantic internet lines—I think there are 25 or 30 in the world. Twenty-two of them start or end in Amsterdam. That's why we have a lot of data centers, and a lot of things are going on. That also attracts a lot of companies that uses that infrastructure, for example, Sirius Gaming and other products like that are developed in our region.

We have a lot of clusters, and that's also a little bit strange. We're not strongly on one economic cluster, but we have several: life science, logistics, ICT, creative sector, of course tourism. I don't if you've ever been in Amsterdam itself. Amsterdam is not only a city, it's a brand, and it's a metropolitan region. Actually, I always say the center of Amsterdam is a little bit from all the Dutch guys because it's our—it's over more than 400 years old. We have the canals. It was also the first, you could say, logistic routes we had, the ships came in from all over the world, sailed into Amsterdam and used the canals to unship their load. That was already the start of our thinking of being also ahead in logistics.

That gives us also the opportunity that we have a lot of wonderful key locations; for example, this one here this is the Zeithaus and the Zeithaus is in Amsterdam. It's our financial center, and the other ones are, of course, of our own city, Haarlemmermeer, because we want to make a little bit promotion for Haarlemmermeer of course. Here you see the area where also Park 2020 is located.

It's the Park—Coert Zakaria, he is the developer of it. We started it together with William McDonough a few years ago, and actually William McDonough and Coert surprised us with a new idea of a making a cradle-to-cradle office park. It was never done before and we just started making one building. Bill McDonough designed it. Coert had the challenge to make it real, and that isn't easy because cradle-to-cradle is a wonderful book, but how to do it in practice, I think that's a challenge.

But we succeeded, and after a few years I can say, and I think Bill McDonough is also proud to say that there is one spot in the world where there is a 100,000 square meter, full-service office park, based on the principle of cradle-to-cradle, and it's in The Netherlands, and, yes, it's in our municipality. Later on, John will tell something about it as well.

What you see here, it's a wonderful picture about—we call it Amsterdam connecting trade because being so strong in logistics gives us also the responsibility of being the strongest in sustainable logistics, so we are developing here. I almost forgot, in the delegation is also Dick [inaudible], CEO of the [inaudible] with Schiphol Area Development Company. I'm sorry, Dick, but you see the story automatically comes to your project. Amsterdam Connecting Trade, if you could say our dream of being the most sustainable logistic region of Europe. We are now developing here new business locations also based on sustainable rules.

For example, the flower auction is somewhere here, and we have now an undisturbed logistic route under construction from the auction to the airport. I think 5,000 trucks a day travel now through the normal traffic. That gives a lot of traffic jams. I think in about a year, the trucks can go undisturbed from the flower auction to the airport. Of course, in future, it will be perhaps with perhaps electrical cars, but now it's a step forward because we also needed the national government to think with us.

One of the things we learned these past two days is that sustainability is not only a science, but it's also a mindset. This morning we had a discussion about politics and decision-making. I think to get sustainable things done, you also should have a mindset at policymakers. We don't have to be convinced anymore, John and I because we are true believers now, but we're not the only ones that should be convinced about the effectiveness of sustainability.

A lot of key locations we have, and another thing with why—and a little bit promotion for the Amsterdam region—is the quality of life. We offer more than 200 different nationalities in Amsterdam. When you walk in Amsterdam, nobody—when you are Chinese, nobody will say, "Oh, you are Chinese," or Japanese. You just walk there and it's quite normal. Of course, this year the Rijksmuseum opened with all the wonderful Rembrandt paintings. We have the Van Gogh Museum, Stedelijk Museum, and a lot of festivals, but you saw it in the movie. We don't have them every day of course.

It's a vibrant and inspirational environment because instead of Phoenix, our city center is really dense. A lot cars. You're not allowed to drive everywhere with your car. When you are on the bike, you have to be a little bit aware not to be hit by a car, but it gives you another feeling of a city. I think that's what makes the Amsterdam capital to a touristical site, of course, because a lot of people, once in their life, have to visit—like I have to visit Phoenix once in my life—you have to visit Amsterdam also.

The other thing is and you saw it on the first map. It's a very small area. To the beach it's 25 minutes and half an hour when there's no traffic jam, and you're on the beach. The other way around, you can go in 30 minutes in a park or something else. It's the benefits of a small area is that you can really fast move yourself from one side to the other. The quality of life is very important. This is, of course, also a promotion chart where we think that we have a very skilled, international talent, but, of course, after two days in Phoenix, I think we can learn also a lot about sustainable universities, because we are really impressed, with what we saw the last two days, what you are doing here on several faculties. I'm very happy that we have the cooperation together.

As you can see, in The Netherlands we all speak Dutch, of course. Not all—you see that, not all speak Dutch. Eight-seven percent, but everybody speaks English nowadays—just kidding, and German. We learn it basically when we are high school. We very early start learning difficult languages so it gives us an international focus from the start. Also, we have international schools and a climate where a lot of Asian people, from Japan and Korea, have their headquarters in The Netherlands. They live with us. They go to school so that gives something also back to the people who are born from nature in The Netherlands.

Here you see something about our education in our region. Haarlemmermeer, Amsterdam, we have two world-class universities. It's really promotion tour. Universities will provide science, some extensive business and finance education schools. I think everything is there to be in Europe, of course, on top of what happening. What we will do is I will finish my presentation with a small movie about the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. Then we'll give the floor to my colleague, John Nederstigt.

Recording: Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. An international business hub right in the heart of Europe with excellent connections to the rest of the world, a thriving business environment, a trend-setting position in the knowledge economy, and above all, a unique quality of life.

Did you know that the country of windmills and tulips is also one of the most wired countries in the world? And that Amsterdam is actually the ultimate small big city, combing an easy-to-navigate size with all the facilities of a cosmopolitan capital? Find out what's so special about Amsterdam by listening to those who know. Learn more about the specific benefits in business and living areas within the region. See why over 1600 international companies have already chosen the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area as their base camp. Experience Amsterdam. You are just one click away.

John Nederstigt: My part of the presentation is also full of movies so it will help you to overcome our accent. You can relax. When you hear the story about Amsterdam, it's the same way as Phoenix is to Tempe actually. We are neighbors and it's the same area, but I will go into depth why Haarlemmermeer could be a great partner, or is actually a great partner, for ASU. You will probably wonder, when you have two world-class universities at hand, why would you like to work together with ASU. Well, I'm assuring you in about 20 minutes you will know why that is the case because it's also what you are doing.

When we arrived here on Saturday, we had some expectations. Well, that didn't really come true. We got here much more than we ever would have expected it. It is something that we could use. We have basically the same goals, is to become more and more sustainable. If you look at our area, we are living with so many people in a pretty small surface. You have different challenges than you probably have in a country like the U.S. I think that's a great mix, actually, for ASU. Well, you have a lot of knowledge and but also the challenges that we have. Putting your knowledge into action would be great to do that in Haarlemmermeer as well. There are also two other regions. You are looking into Asia and you are looking into South America to do that.

It's always a technique. There you go. I'm trying to point that out over here, but that is, of course, the device. Haarlemmermeer is—I know it's pretty rare, actually, for a young guy to say that—it's younger than the U.S. In most cases, Europe is old, but Haarlemmermeer used to be water. A meer is the same as a lake and we pumped it dry in 1852. It had two reasons. The main reason is actually to protect Amsterdam from flooding. The other reason is to have some land to feed the people in the region of Amsterdam because that was a growing city.

We have 150,000 people living in the city. The city has different towns, villages, and the main one is called Hoofddorp. It's quite easy, it's head village if you translate it. It has half of the population and we have, and I put it into American measures, 46,500 acres. I had a presentation this morning from somebody from Phoenix, and it's about half the size of the Phoenix area. Together, with you guys, we have fast, and also the fastest growing, population in the country. That has to do with jobs.

We have more jobs than our own workforce can supply. We have a young population, young families, kids, stuff like that. We have the highest gross national product per capita in the country. We have the highest number of cars. It's funny when you live in the city or even the country. Well, railroads and public transport is probably more common, but that is our number of cars.

It's a very nice area to live in, the second place on the socio-economic index, and we have the lowest unemployment rate in the country. But we still see it as a problem right now because the crisis is also hitting hard to us. We have a lot of foreign companies. It's an international environment, and we would like to develop ourselves as a region where you can work and where you can live. If you are so dependent on business and if you're so dependent on everything off of what I just said, you need to do it on a sustainable way. Otherwise, you will run into a dead-end street.

Why Haarlemmermeer? Why would you like to work with Haarlemmermeer? It's a new city. Arthur already mentioned it. We are pioneers. We pumped the lake dry and we are still actually working as hard to get things running. We have a lot of plans, actually. We are about to grow still. We have plans for the largest number of new housing in the country. If you wanted to achieve that and you look into the future, better do it now right, or better do it sustainable, otherwise you have to mend it in a couple of years.

We are approachable, and we think we are flexible. The last couple of days we had discussions and presentations on how to plan urban development. Well, this is a big, well, test garden, actually for that kind of thing. That's very important. We are very committed. You didn't notice that, but Arthur and I are politicians, from different parties and coalition can work though. That's we what we shout. Now, really, we—I can say it that here I guess. We are committed to that.

About three years ago, we made an extensive strategy towards sustainability. Instead of only making an effort from the governmental organization, we said we should do it altogether with all the 150,000 people and its companies. By doing so, we started up 60 projects, and we feel very proud on that. After two days of ASU, we say, "Well, we could have done much better probably," but anyway.

The total investment, and I will highlight a few of those projects later on and I will also highlight the role of the government in this, but the total investment is over $70 million in U.S. and that is jointly invested by the government, or by the municipality, and the companies. The way how we approach is—well, we call it the wheel of sustainability. Let me explain it to you.

We looked at it from an economical point of view, probably the same as in America. It's pretty hard to change people, but if you put money in that development, people are starting to listen. We say sustainability is profitable in more ways, not only money but also for the future. If you put economy in it, you need education. You need knowledge. With knowledge, you can start the innovation. With innovation, you can basically hit or spark up the sustainability and with that you've got a kind of a wheel going on.

What we try to do is actually connect the business community with the education community and try to keep it rolling on it. That's also the reason why we hit ASU. For the ones who are interested in that, it was just only one click away. We googled, really, and then we found ASU. Then we just placed a phone call. Now, 18 months later, we are here, and we think that we can benefit from each other.

A number of projects, Park 202, I will show a short movie later on that. That is the still the largest cradle-to-cradle office development in the world. Arthur just mentioned it, 100,000 square meters, that is around one million square foot of office space altogether. It's still growing. When you're in the country, where there is a crisis or at least in all Western Europe, where all these developments stop. Everybody is asking for lower prices and in that area, there are still companies say I would like to be there and we are still developing it. That means there is a future for that.

A-Four on West. A-Four is the highway, comparable with the I-10 or the I-17. We have a couple highways running into our city. Amsterdam connecting trade. Arthur already mentioned it. Wind parks, better airport regions, meaning when you have one of the largest airports of Europe or even the world within your city limits, the only way to survive is actually to make that airport as sustainable as possible. Otherwise, you will hit that dead-end street sooner or later.

Engine. One of the projects we started is to encourage entrepreneurs to start new companies with sustainable ideas. They are being helped by our current entrepreneurs in terms of knowledge, in terms of questions they have but also investment. Two words I would like to point out is the sustainable investment company and that's kinda neat.

Recording: [Music]. Imagining different buildings inhabiting the same kind of place and where the ideas are shared but the forms are a celebration of creativity and uniqueness. Cradle-to-cradle stands for an idea that everything is healthy and productive and delightful. We're gonna be combining at Park 2020 both the human-centered design, worrying about all the people and everything that goes along with them, but we're also worrying about the whole world. When Park 202 is finished, I think people will, hopefully, say, "What a wonderful community this is. Wow, look at this." In the future, people will look at projects like this one and say, "This is where it happened."

[Foreign language and music].

Biological Pavilion we call it, a building that tells a story about products that go back to the natural world when humans are finished with it. It's really about food and wood and materials that dissolve. Then in the distance will be a Technical Pavilion, which is about a solar collector thing, glass and metals and things we will reform into new products over time. This building will be joined by its brothers and sisters that will be in the same family, with the same fundamental constitutions and concepts underlying them, which is a safe, healthy world as they all speak to each other because they have the same underlying circulatory system.

[Foreign language and music 38:27-40:24].

John Nederstigt: I can tell you, I mean this is for us quite normal right now, Park 2020, when you walk around, but every time that we have visitor, and there are people coming, they are astonished. Looking at this video, and this is about a year, year-and-a-half old, I think, there are more offices right now in that Park 2020. It is just an example of how our community is working on that.

You have sun. We have also some sun, but we also have wind. Wind energy is a pretty important part in our ambition to become more and more self-sustaining. We have wind parks. We live by the Agreement of Kyoto so the 2020, the 2030 rule, that is basically our ambition. It's pretty hard because Kyoto is a couple of years ago and we know that a lot of countries, but also a lot of cities, have loosened, actually, their ambitions. We don't. Actually, we draw back a line from 2020 to 2014. That's where the next local elections are, and we made that ambition then pretty clear.

If we succeed, we believe we are the only municipality in the country that matched the ambition that fit into that, and we are right on track. Wind parks. Bio-based connections. This is miscanthus. In Holland we call it elephant grass. It's about ten feet high, a kind of grass. One of the main reasons is you can do a lot with it. You can make fuels out of it. You can just make heating material but also plastics. When you live very close by an airport and you grow things and you harvest it, it will attract birds. Trust me, birds and airplanes don't really fit together. This could be something very special for our region or other airport regions.

About our airport regions. There are a couple of airports who joined together as how can we make our area connecting with the sustainable ambitions, with the people and with the future? This is the last video I'm going to show you, about Schiphol. Then I will jump into that part that we are doing, especially in Haarlemmermeer and of which I believe that we are unique ourselves as well. That's the airport, Schiphol.

Recording: [Music].

John Nederstigt: I would like to give you once more warning. In the event one of you ever come to Haarlemmermeer with students or whatever, there was a small part in that video where there was a plug, electrical plug.

Audience: It was American.

John Nederstigt: It was an American plug, correct. [Laughter]. Don't make the mistake that first [inaudible]. They can speak English maybe they can also have the same—it's 220 and it's a different plug. Anyway, I talked about our ambitions and about all the ambitions that should help us by reducing CO2 by 75 kilotons and in 2020, 28 kilotons. As I told you, it was by the principle.

One of the projects comes actually from a problem. We all know that we have to change something but for some reason it doesn't really take off. We found out that the market is ready. It is profitable, but for some reason it doesn't really take off. What we did is one of the projects is we started an investment fund with the municipality, together. We started some projects and which should help us.

It was started with a revolving character. That means that the money that we put in must come out in the next coming whatever, 10, 15 years. It depends on the projects. There's one Dutch line in it: scale up and speed up. We believe if we show the world, basically, that it can be done, every step will make quicker and faster. What we are basically are going to do is show some examples.

We need a multiplier. We put in there three million euros. That's about four-and-a-half million U.S. dollars, but we don't want to subsidize things. Governments are sometimes good for subsidies, but when you subsidize it, it will take out, actually, the entrepreneurial driving force.

Next to that, it is profitable in the end so why would you put money in it? Let's do it together. It worked. I will tell you later on. We also would like to have our own entrepreneurs benefit from it. Social returns. We have a lot of people with a certain kind of distance to the labor market for whatever reasons, physically disabled or whatever. It would be great if you could put those people in a working position.

Visibility. If you show an example, we will be an inspirational source for the rest actually. Innovation. You can always wait until the latest innovation, then you can wait forever. Do it today because that will finance, eventually the innovation of tomorrow.

We started with ten projects. We started with that four-and-a-half million euros of dollars of our own, and we succeeded in collecting from the market 45 million in total. If you think that red tape and regulation is something typically American, well, I can promise you we have that as well. It's funny. When you have rules and regulation, to make a better world, a more sustainable world, well, those rules will stop you, prevent you from doing so.

One of the rules is actually such a high blockade that we decided to start our own utility company again. That will help us, actually, to overcome those rules and regulations. I will not go into depth. I would love to tell you later on if you like. That's one of the things. When you visit us, and that would be after the summer possibly, some of you, you will see that we have our own utility company again: green energy, lower price, produced by ourselves.

The projects that we have is for house owners. If you invest in your own house, that is completely understandable. But our project is also for people who do not own houses. In Holland, it's about 60-40, 65-35 owners to renters. The biggest challenge is in the existing areas, in the existing built environment.

We also work with a variety of organizations. As I told you, it's not the governmental body only, but it's the people. It's the sporting clubs. We have a different structure for that, but if we could involve a soccer club, a tennis club, doing so, it will help them lower their cost eventually. Also, all the members show that they are doing it responsibly. That will help to set the number of examples.

The project, some of them, are very easy at hand. We call it low-hanging fruit. Some of them are very [inaudible]. A big part of the land will be—we will have some solar power fields on that. If you have a house, but you don't have a roof—sounds very funny for people from this area, but we have apartment buildings and stuff like that—you could have your own solar roof in the solar field, for instance. Well, that's low-hanging fruit.

Other ones, and there are two examples that—direct current. As you all may know, is we have selected about 80, 90 as a goal, for AC, alternating current. It costs a lot of efficiency to transport alternating current power to your door. But your home devices, your stereo, whatever, is all on DC. We made a closed environment and we do it with DC, lowest number of the use of power. We invest in that, and it will help us, possibly, in the future when you have closed environments, to have DC. By the way, solar power, wind power is DC power, and an algae project.

This is important. GSC, the Global Solutions Centers. It's one of the three centers in the world. We are working on together. We have ambition and, as I told you in the beginning of my presentation, we thought we were pretty much on track. When listening to the people, and there is only one-and-a-half day here at ASU, we know that there is a lot yet to accomplish. That's why we are very proud and happy that one of the Solutions Centers will be located in Haarlemmermeer. It's not only for Haarlemmermeer. It's for the whole region, possibly even, later on, for the whole western part of Europe.

A lot of knowledge can be shared and a lot can be done. It will help us. We are basically working on a more sustainable environment, not only for our own area but also for our neighbors. Let's say the Scottsvilles and the Glendales of this area. By doing so and by doing all these projects, you will attract, actually, all the innovations to our area. At the end, we may become the local—that's European—Silicon Valley of sustainability. With the help of ASU we can do a lot because we are very committed to that. It's not only the politics. It's not only the people, but also the companies are committed to that.

Building partnerships, solving problems, being in the start of the new developments. We have questions over and over, and we will put them into your hands and try to solve that. Why are we really fit to each other? It has to do with the practical approach, basically. We feel that we are a bunch of pioneers in The Netherlands and the academic field in Europe is much more like it's a school environment. You learn about it. Applying knowledge is very important, applying that what you learn into practice will help actually making the world sustainable. That's what we are doing together.

We would be happy to host you, faculty, but also students, to work on that. I think we have also something to offer because it will help you to bring back how we deal with certain problems. We have different problems than you have and also different solutions. The roles. GIOS, ASU, and Haarlemmermeer, we are basically partnering in finding projects. We brought to the district three projects, initial projects, to work on that. We make the change together and we design appropriate teams at the end to solve it.

It is a line, really, right now, waiting in our area, in our municipality to work together with you because when you act and when you work with these kind of things, you will make people enthusiastic and you will see that's working. We are pretty much sure, actually, that the GSSC in Haarlemmermeer will be a success for us, but also for ASU.

We will be happy, Arthur and I, to answer any questions or listen to any remarks on this presentation. If there is anything you would like to know the projects that we are doing, and you have seen a lot of technical solutions, but the social part of sustainability is very important. We are lagging a little behind in that, but we would be happy to answer or react on any questions or remarks.

[Applause].