Time: Monday 18 September 2023 at 19-21 Location: Dokkhuset Scene på Solsiden, Trondheim Organizer: NTNU University Museum and NTNU Sustainability Language: English Tickets: NTNU Evening is free and open to everyone
The event will be photographed and live streamed from www.ntnu.no/kveld
The consequences of climate change have become frighteningly clear to us. NTNU has many researchers working to find sustainable solutions and how we can succeed in the demanding changes that are needed. This includes a view to emission-free energy, loss of natural diversity, batteries, circular cities, plastic pollution and digital change. A new interdisciplinary research program for sustainability at NTNU has been named: Sustainable Research at NTNU (SusRes@NTNU). It spans 11 projects with 47 doctorates over 4 years. Tonight, you will meet the researchers from 1 of these 11 projects, and they work with hydropower.
Speaker
Tor Haakon Bakken leads the "Sustainable hydropower" project. He explains to us: What is this and why was it created? Tor Haakon is a professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
PhD-students
Hanne Bjørnås Krogstie: Humans are increasingly altering the natural environment on a global scale, affecting existing patterns of environmental variation. Are species and ecosystems able to adapt to these changes? The overall aim of her work is to understand how the environmental variation caused by hydropower, such as changes in water levels of lakes, affects freshwater communities. Revealing possible patterns of impact along environmental gradients may help us identify areas or lake types requiring stronger protection or altered regulation practices to maintain biodiversity. Hanne has completed her master’s degree in Natural resources management at NTNU and is PhD Candidate at the Department of Natural History, NTNU University Museum.
Sif de Visser is from the Netherlands where she studied environmental science. She is now researching how to develop methods and models for life cycle analyzes (LCA) related to various challenges in hydropower production. She calculates how land use, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions collectively affect nature and the ecosystem. This will result in a global screening to identify potential hotspots where efforts are needed. This knowledge is used for more environmentally friendly electricity production. Sif is doing her PhD at the Department of Energy and Process Engineering
Christianne Dalsbotten Solvåg is a biologist with a master's from NTNU, where she focused her study on how environmental variation affects the movement patterns of brown trout. In her doctoral research, she has replaced fish with insects, so now she is diving into the life cycle of insects living in hydropower reservoirs to investigate how they are affected by water level regulations. Christianne is a researcher at Department of biology.
Lennart Schönfelder: To produce electricity from hydropower, large water reservoirs are needed. Their operation must also take into account other uses such as water supply, irrigation and flood control as well as hydrological risk and optimization. Water supply and demand varies with the seasons. Economic, ecological and social factors also play a role. Lennart's research assesses all areas of use in order to find a system for the best possible socio-economic operation which at the same time takes care of the needs of all stakeholders.
Viviane Aubin from Québec in Canada earned her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in energy engineering from Polytechnique Montréal. Before starting her Ph.D. at NTNU, she worked at Hydro-Québec, the main power company in the province. This corresponds to Norway's Statkraft and Statnett. Québec has a lot of hydropower and some wind power, just like in Norway. Her job consisted of understanding how hydropower should best be used in the energy transition to renewable energy. In her PhD work, she investigates how to best utilize hydropower, while also taking into account related environmental issues.
