Sustainability and energy transition in Swiss universities of applied sciences

First example: sustainable residential buildings

Household electricity consumption in Switzerland accounts for a substantial proportion of national demand, that is, 34.36% according to 2021 government data.^[2] For this reason, the federal and local governments have encouraged the construction of nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) buildings,^[2] whose core principles are as follows: (1) Reducing the impact of households in terms of electricity consumption. (2) Striking a substantial balance between production and consumption. (3) This balance as achievable only if an annual average is considered

If one considers the local generation (production) of renewable electricity using photovoltaic (PV) cells, the problem lies in the intermittence of such sources, with generation varying at both daily and annual timescales.

On a daily basis, solar irradiation is highest during the day and lowest during the night, but even during the day, more solar energy than required is produced, which means that excess supply can be sold to the grid (green part in Figure 2). During the night, generation is insufficient, driving the need to buy energy from the grid (red part in Figure 2). The gray area in Figure 2 denotes self-consumed energy. If batteries are used in a building (left of Figure 2), then some of the excess energy produced during the day can be stored and reused during the night (yellow area in Figure 2).

Figure 2. Daily solar energy production and energy consumption without batteries (left) and with battery storage (right).

Moreover, solar irradiation is abundant during the summer months, but the highest energy consumption occurs primarily in winter.

Figure 3 shows that PV cell-based energy production (blue part) is substantially higher during the summer months and much lower during the winter months. Production is insufficient to compensate for the energy load (consumed) in a building (green part) and from its tenants (red part). It is therefore useful to find ways to store the excess energy produced during the summer so that it can be used during the winter. Unfortunately, using batteries for prolonged storage to manage summer-winter cycle is excessively expensive.

Figure 3. Cumulated energy in terms of production and consumption, monthly resolution for a full operating year. PV, Photovoltaics.

Chemical storage solutions can preserve substantial amounts of energy, thereby enabling conversion into electricity when needed (seasonal lag). Figure 4 illustrates consumption versus solar production on a yearly basis. As can be seen, hydrogen is one option for use as a storage chemical and can be produced from water electrolysis. It also serves as an excellent long-term energy storage solution. Currently, the use of hydrogen in households is exclusively experimental.

Figure 4. Energy cycle in a household during the year and hydrogen produced and consumed to keep the house independent from the grid.

In this project for the integration of energy storage using the hydrogen as a vector in residential buildings, the stakeholders involved are as follows: (1) System Evergreen is the industrial partner coordinating the engineering and construction of the pilot site.^[3] (2) SUPSI Department of Technology Innovation is the academic partner developing the simulation model.^[4] This serves as a good opportunity for two bachelor's degree students for their theses and one master's student for his master's thesis. (3) InnoSuisse is the federal agency for innovation that provides the funds for the feasibility study.^[1]

This project has proved valuable for all the stakeholders involved. The industrial partner was able to secure a fast response time to organize a research team and elaborate on the modeling of the entire hydrogen system. The UAS involved three students in applied research, thus acquiring industrial and academic knowledge. InnoSuisse acted as a broker funding the involvement of the not-for-profit UAS. InnoSuisse, as a public government agency, receives the opportunity to extend energy and CO₂ savings to other actors in civil, industrial and commercial sectors.

Second example: consumer production and how to avoid waste from footwear

This example of sustainability research is the result of applied research conducted on successive projects at the UAS SUPSI. It resulted in the publication of two books.^[5,6] The results can be applied to any consumer product and the manufacturing, assembly, and delivery of the product. Here, we introduce a shoe or footwear as the product of interest and how its production can dramatically improve the prevention of wastage in materials, water, and energy.

Manufacturing has evolved from craft production to mass production and mass customization. In Figure 5, the X-axis represents product variety, while the Y-axis indicates product volume. The figure traces the evolution of well-known industrial revolutions, starting from craft production until the invention of steam power, which enabled a considerable increase in production volumes. Relevant technologies ranged from textile machines to cars, which advanced mass production according to the principles elaborated by Henry Ford. Mass production reduced the costs of manufacturing and assembly, but the variety of products significantly declined. The problems of mass production were subsequently overcome through the introduction of computers and electronics, which cleared the way for the more flexible production of diverse goods. For example, cars can be manufactured in different colors or with four or two doors all on the same production line. All products are designed, made, assembled, and delivered to shops and then, hopefully, sold. We say "hopefully" because not all products that are manufactured, delivered, and stocked in a shop will be sold. Many will remain unsold. For the footwear industry, a data analysis confirmed that 20% of footwear are unsold (the percentage for clothes and dresses is even higher at 40%),^[5] because mass production is underlain only by approximate knowledge of the size of a market, the time to market, and actual customer specifications. These approximations are inevitable because the customer is at the end of the value chain only when products occupy shelves (Figure 6).

Figure 5. Evolution and involution of production paradigms on product variety versus product volume.

Figure 6. Different shoe shop configurations under the mass production and mass customization paradigms.

The 5^th Industrial Revolution is based on a new paradigm: position the customer to the beginning of the value chain before products are even made.^[7,8] If the customer can see or touch their prospective purchase—in this case, a pair of shoes—then they can choose certain components, colors, or materials and, most importantly, have their feet measured exactly so that the shoes are manufactured according to these measurements. Correspondingly, only the shoes that have already been bought will need to be made—this translates to the avoidance of a potential 20% of unsold shoes.

Two aspects came together to facilitate this paradigm change: (1) The digitalization of manufacturing and production after the 1950s. (2) The change in relationship between the producer and the customer, which gave rise to the concept of the "prosumer"—a synergy between a producer and a consumer who takes a more active role in the product value chain.

Against this backdrop, a newly emerging business concept is mass customization, which still involves production in large quantities, as with mass production, but with a focus on the customer and not only on the market. In this paradigm shift from mass production to mass customization, but the goals are also to produce only: "what is necessary", "when it is necessary", and "to customer specifications".

Relevant skills are also changing, thereby increasing the importance of vocation, technology, and education.^[8] One should now develop not only the basic skills of cutting leather, stitching and glueing, and polishing, among others, but also competencies that connect the consumer or prosumer to the producer. These skills are taught in UAS SUPSI. Additionally, the reduced wastage made possible by the paradigm shift from mass production to mass customization reinforces sustainability because it adds the production of only what is sustainable to the first three points above.

In courses on engineering as well as design and management, UAS students learn how to integrate practical and theoretical skills, along with the importance of understanding the needs of customers and relating them to the reality of production in a company and an entire supply chain.