The nitrogen crisis
In the last few decennia, the Netherlands has been struggling with an ongoing nitrogen crisis. Because the Netherlands is so densely populated, there is a lot of agriculture, industry and traffic on a relatively small surface area. All those forms of human activities lead to emission of nitrogen compounds, in particular nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia (NH3). The Netherlands is the biggest emitter of nitrogen in Europe. In addition, because of its geographical location, the Netherlands is experiencing a lot of rain, floods and other forms of water. Because of this, the soil has been “flushed” from nutrients for thousands of years. This makes the Dutch soil relatively nutrient-deficient, which has lead to build-up of ecosystems based on plants that thrive on nutrient-deficient soil. The Dutch government has therefore made efforts to reduce the emission of nitrogen. In the entire European Union (including the Netherlands), a number of nature reserves have been assigned the ‘Natura2000’ status. These areas are protected from damage by European law.
Nitrogen modelling
When an initiator of a project applies for permits, they have to prove that their project does not lead to significant nitrogen deposition on Natura2000-areas. The Dutch authorities have developed the AERIUSmodel, which can be used to model the emissions of nitrogen during a project.
The AERIUS-model is an online website, in which the user has to enter their project data manually. This can make the modelling process slow and prone to typos. Furthermore, the user has to construct their own model, which serves to provide an estimate of the emission sources. For sustainable energy projects, these sources are usually limited to emissions from construction vehicles, transportation, or shipping. For correct and realistic nitrogen modelling, you should have knowledge on the mechanical characteristics of construction and transport vehicles, including engine power, engine loads, the various providers and brands of construction vehicles, etc. Pondera has recently started a development track for nitrogen models aimed specifically at sustainable
energy projects.
Internship assignment
The aim of this internship is to construct nitrogen models for various types of sustainable energy projects, including wind farms, solar farms, battery storage and transformator stations. You will base these models mostly on scientific papers, grey literature, product data sheets, mathematical formulae, theory-based estimates, or interviews with experts in the field. The most important topic of the model is the emission from construction equipment. The models will be constructed in MS Excel, and you will build an automatization tool in Python that allows automatic entering of the data into the AERIUS-model. If time and experience allow it, you can also dive into automatization using the AERIUS-API.
What do we offer?
- Flexible starting data; you can start at any moment you like.
- Flexible duration; we will discuss together how long your internship should take.
- Working space on our office, directly located next to Arnhem Central Station. This also allows you to experience the daily life within a Dutch consultancy firm in the field of sustainable energy.
- An attractive monetary internship compensation.
- Personal guidance by one or more of our consultants, including our nitrogen expert who is the
founder of the nitrogen models within Pondera.
Of course this internship can be adjusted based on the requirements that your education institute pose.
