Climate Action Programme lecture Sonja van Dam and Malte Vogt

Thursday 12 October, 2023

The lecture was moderated by David Vermaas.

• Click here to download the presentation by Sonja van Dam
• Click here to download the presentation by Malte Vogt
• Click here to look back at the recording

"Between a rock and a hard place, How co-creation can foster scaling up the circular economy"

The circular economy hinges on the circular flows of products to close loops. Enabling the reserve logistics for e.g for remanufacturing, is therefore an essential process that is currently unfortunately still not commonplace. The automotive aftermarket, with its longstanding but complex remanufacturing practices, presents a compelling case study, especially in light of the EU's proposed new “right to repair” directive. Once these new regulations take effect, numerous manufacturers will be obligated to supply spare parts for 5-10 years after production of a product, mirroring the existing practices in the automotive industry.

The presentation will discuss learnings from a case study with remanufactured car parts conducted together with a large German car parts (re)manufacturer and a reverse logistics service provider as part of the H2020 project ReCiPSS. It exemplifies how the involvement of diverse stakeholders through co-creation contributed to the simplification of the reserve logistics value chain and draws learnings on the broader implications for the circular economy.

Dr. Sonja van Dam is Assistant Professor in circular product design and energy consumption & transitions at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Key elements in her work are co-creating circular product-service systems and designing for sustainable behaviour change. Sonja is Academic Career Tracker in the Climate Action Programma of the Flagship: Scaling the Circular Economy: an integral design approach.

"Energy transition vs. circular economy: How should solar energy grow?"

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) solar energy is the technology with the greatest potential to mitigate climate change. Studies show to be climate neutral by 2050, we will need to install more than 60 times as much photovoltaic (PV) system capacity in the next 28 years as we have done cumulatively over the past 70 years. This translates into a massive increase in material demand including critical raw materials (CRM). This adds to a material demand, which is already beyond what our planets boundaries can sustain. Circular economy concepts show potential to reduce overall material demand compared to the current linear economy. How can solar PV mange both transitions simultaneously?

Dr. Malte Ruben Vogt is Assistant Professor in materials for circular renewable energy technologies in the Electrical Sustainable Energy (ESE) Department at the Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science (EEMCS) faculty of TU Delft. Malte is Academic Career Tracker in the Climate Action Programme of the Flagship: Materials for circular renewable energy technologies.

Registration is mandatory via this link. Thank you