Prof. dr. Ad van Wijk is a sustainable energy entrepreneur, he is one of the most influential green innovators in Europe. Van Wijk achieved many important prizes for excellent entrepreneurship. Amongs others, he was Dutch entrepreneur of the year in 2007 and Dutch top-executive in 2008.
Prof. dr. Ad van Wijk is coming to Sofia for the WEBIT.FESTIVAL, where some of world's top enterprise leaders, Europe's top policy makers and the hottest startups and founders give a talk. In this special interview for PREMIUM Lifestyle we talk about the practical applications of green energy. Did you know you can get paid for parking your car in the city?
One of the first things Google says about you is that you are “one of the most influential sustainable energy entrepreneurs and innovators in Europe”, what a great introduction! What does that “job” mean?
As a founder of the companies Ecofys and Econcern I have realized many innovative sustainable energy projects and products. For example:
• We built the first commercial offshore wind farm in 2007 in the North Sea, the Princess Amalia Wind Farm.
• We developed the closed greenhouse. This is a greenhouse which captures the solar energy in summer, stores it in hot water in the ground and uses it in winter time. Such a greenhouse produces more energy than it needs and the excess energy could be used for heating houses.
• We bought a methanol plant and transformed it into the world’s largest second generation bio-methanol plant.
When you want to realize such large and innovative sustainable energy projects, the ‘’job’’ as entrepreneur in the field of sustainable energy is first of all to be creative and innovative. But that is not enough, then you need to be persuasive and tenacious. And at last you need to be bold and persistent.
What part of this will you be talking about during Webit?
As a professor Future Energy Systems and “sustainable energy entrepreneur” I do research but especially want to realize innovative future sustainable energy systems. We see many technology system changes on the horizon such as 3-D printing, robotizing, digital manufacturing, the Internet of Things and autonomous driving. In energy it is not only the revolutionary development of sustainable energy technologies such as solar cells, wind turbines, heat pumps, fuel cells and electrolysis, but
