Tidal flow energy generation

Through Facebook Jon Brown shared his idea on extensive tidal flow energy generation facilities:

"To start with it's important for the Netherlands to establish a reliable, independent energy supply:
It's lowland position, along with experience building the Delta Works and Zuiderzee Works, means it's in a perfect position to build extensive tidal flow energy generation facilities..." read the whole post

Lifelong learning

One of latest members of the Enviu network, Bee Leng Lee, comes originally from Singapore and introduces to us her idea on Lifelong learning and how to create a positive and safe environment for senior students. Here is a piece of the document she sent us, to read the whole doc follow this link.

Why LLL?
People are the core infrastructure and resource of a country. The workforce in this case is extremely vital to sustain competitiveness. And people make up the workforce. So they need to be properly trained. To change something, we need to educate or make awareness of the changing world to the people.
While from the Lisbon treaty, the EU commission under Education and Training has implemented various Lifelong Learning Programmes (LLP) to enhance globalisation, much of the initiatives are based on student and staff exchange under the Erasmus, Comenius programmes. One purpose of this is to create opportunities for students and staff to expand their horizon to work/study in another country... Read the whole post

3 guidelines to foster innovation

Inspired by a column of Pieter Hilhorst Carel Muller suggested that the 3 guidelines for "passionate budget cuts", might also apply to foster innovation: "de-regulate, small-scaliness and do-it-yourself".

So advise to the government would be:
- de-regulate: it would be cheaper and much nicer to change unnecessary juridical fights with mediation. Looking for a solution is then the main goal, not applying the rules (as the "paarse krokodil" advertisement).
-Small-scaliness: from the positive experience in health care we can learn that large-scale is not always cost efficient, nor "customer friendly" to the patients. Small-cale can be "klein maar fijn", and if it would be the norm in healtcare it could save 2,8 mld euros according to Kees Tamboer in the Parool 10th of Febr 2010.
- do-it-yourself: and finally, the way to save most, according to Pieter Hilhorst, is let amateurs take over the work of professionals, as much as possible, as banks did with home-banking.

What do you think? Could the need to cut expenses create opportunities for new policies/ ideas?
And what do you think about the 3 principles suggested?

A summary of your input so far

THANK YOU, for all your input so far! We received ideas and answers through our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and several people even sent in complete articles and worked out ideas. But DON'T STOP yet, we have the time until the 12th of March to gather our thoughts, enrich them and create new ideas. So please keep sending them in and join the discussion!

We thought it would be nice to give you a short wrap up; what has been said about the Netherlands and the competitiveness of its knowledge economy? 

We began by exploring what should be changed in NL, some thoughts were:
- Attitude of laziness/ Lack of ambition
- instead of striving for more and more income, striving for a higher quality of living
- Less complaints and more do'ers
- Feel responsable and connected to the rest of the world
- Focus on shared interests from people (who doesn't want a healthy planet?) instead of the current focus on the differences
- too much of unsystemized talks between government, developers and citizens
- open up more to international concepts, people, ideas.

When we asked about our greatest strength, our water management came up mostly:
- Water engineering
- Dutch Design
- Good infrastructure
- It's lowland position, along with experience building the Delta Works and Zuiderzee Works.

Then we started dreaming of 2020, NL would then be:
- still famous for our windmills and dykes. And we become known for the development and knowledge sharing on dealing with rising sea levels and (off shore) wind energy.
- the most Livable Delta in Western Europe and decision makers visiting from everywhere to see how this was achieved. They are especially interested in the holistic approach that provided the direction for this situation, in which sectors looked for their synergy instead of competing for attention, and funding.
- there is no more private transportation such as cars. In the future the Netherlands has already surpassed the "big brother" fear and works 100% interconnected, with a completely convenient transport system and where people are completely open to it.
- Four big cities competing eachother in the field of sustainability. In Utrecht all housing is CO2 neutral. Rotterdam has the most sustainable port in the world. In Amsterdam is the most elctric car friendly city on this globe and Den haag generates most of his energy decentralized. Let our pearls be inspriring examples for others!


And some of the first, concrete ideas that have been sent in are:
- Inspired by a column of Pieter Hilhorst; 3 guidelines to foster innovation: "de-regulate, small-scaliness and do-it-yourself" from Carel Muller.
- Life Long Learning and how to create a safe and positive environment for senior students by Bee from Singapore. And also Igor Kluin wrote before on our blog about this idea.
- Build extensive tidal flow energy generation facilities by Jon Brown
- Penta energetica: 5 principles that form a package of policy principles, that promote energy integration, resulting in a Neterlands with an “High Quality, Low Carbon society”, from Kees den Blanken.
- From Development Cooperation to Development Investment, by Third Chamber members (amongst who Marlon van Dijk)

If you would like to comment on one of the ideas, leave them below this post. And if you like to send in your own idea, please do: josine@enviu.org