Twelve years ago, Prof. Günter Koch founded the think tank ‘Humboldt Cosmos Multiversity’ (HCM) in Tenerife and has been organising an annual Bootcamp in close cooperation with the German University of Applied Sciences Kempten and the University of Tenerife, ULL, as well as alternating universities from Europe.
This is an intensive workshop in which students from Europe, together with representatives from the University of Tenerife (ULL), think about and develop feasible plans for the environmentally friendly future of the economy on the Canary Islands.
While in the first few years the focus was on economic analyses, e.g. on the diversification of the island’s economy, which are now being taken up and propagated by politicians, in recent years, and especially this year, companies that play an important and exemplary role in a sustainable economic strategy, particularly in Tenerife, have been included in the studies.
30 students and their professors from Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, and Albania, as well as from Tenerife, invested a week of their time, creativity and analytical skills to produce concrete, pioneering proposals for the participating companies.
Five companies on Tenerife agreed to work with groups of six students and one of their professors to delve deep into the topics of sustainable and regenerative management, e.g. by means of circular economy operations. Depending on the type of company, different proposals emerged.
The frontrunner is the Loro Parque Foundation, which is involved in a whole range of projects and ideas, such as collecting used textiles for recycling, setting up solar and wind energy farms to generate electricity beyond its own needs, or – according to a creative suggestion from the students – developing ‘eco-games’ with prizes for visitors to Loro Parque.
The company TAGUA, which made its desalination and deep drilling facilities the subject of the visit, stood out in terms of the extraction and treatment of water and, surprisingly related to this, issues of environmentally friendly transport. As a leading representative of the high-tech industry, the semiconductor developer Wooptix, whose aim is to establish sustainable semiconductor production in Tenerife, was also involved.
The technology department of the Institute of Astrophysics (IAC), which is dedicated to the development of telescopes, microsatellites and electromedical devices, also took part in a highly demanding segment and was inspired to think about how the IAC could make sustainability a principle for all of its products and services.
As a special ‘treat’, the students were given access to the company PISCES VI, which operates a base in Radazul for marine and seabed exploration projects with its own submarine and whose tasks include analysing the state of the sea around the Canary Islands, a process known as ‘blue ecology’.
Presentations by business development organisations such as PROEXCA or ‘Why Tenerife’ and a visit to the Institute for Renewable Energies (ITER) rounded off the information gathering. An initial presentation of the work results took place at the university at the end of November.
The students are now required to document the results of their work in a report by the end of the year. It is to be hoped that some of these ideas will not only be taken up by the five companies involved, but also by politicians planning the future of the Canary Islands.
Author’s line: Günter Koch, on 17 November 2024 in Puerto de la Cruz
