Master Thesis Supervision

If you are planning to write your master thesis soon, you can apply to write your thesis at the ERIM centre for Sustainability & Climate Research (SCR).

1. City initiatives

Sustainable initiatives from companies, local government, and civil society. Focusing on areas like: energy (energy savings, green energy generation, electric driving), green construction/ buildings and roofs, waste prevention, biodiversity, food and (social) entrepreneurship. Based on, amongst others, resilience and systems theories and transition management.

2. Cradle to cradle

Case-studies on the implementation of c2c, focusing on the approach, bottlenecks, advantages (including financials), firm collaborations within the total supply chain, regulations, certification, etcetera.

3. Green energy

Wind, solar, geothermal, water, biomass, biofuels, etcetera versus fossil fuels and nuclear power. Focusing on, for example, how to obtain a more equal level playing field between the different powers, international developments versus the Dutch situation, current regulations (EU, national, regional), how to further support green energy, revenues (financial and social) of different forms of energy generation, initiatives from cities, civil society and research institutions.

4. Nuclear

As a solution towards climate change nuclear energy is gaining much attention, since it's co2 neutral energy. Still nuclear is a fossil fuel. The thesis written within this theme will focus on the Dutch and international plans on nuclear and its pros and cons. The thesis will focus on issues like nuclear waste, mining (including the new mining in Africa), financial costs of nuclear in relation to green energy, the amount of inventory of uranium left, health aspects of workers and inhabitants, and power of stakeholders.

5. Rio+20

In 2012, the www.earthsummit2012.org conference will take place in Rio. From April 20 to 23, 2011, the Pre-Rio 2012 business event - The Rio Forum of Urban Sustainability 'BrightGreen Cities' will be organised. This year COP16 will take place in Cancun. After Copenhagen, not much is expected in Cancun on the outcomes in terms of governmental agreements on climate change. In the mean while, substantial steps are taken by some companies and cities in greening their business and local environments. The thesis will describe what will happen at The Earth Summit Rio+20. It will examine both Brazil’s position and/or that of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (located in Geneva) which represents many leading multinational firms.

6. Free topic

Also, we offer the freedom to suggest a research topic of your own, on which we can decide whether this fits into the centre's research interests.

Interested? Please email to ivries@rsm.nl  for further information. Places are limited, therefore we take preference for the more ambitious students/ research proposals. Your finalised thesis will be published on the SCR centre's website.

Gail Whiteman, Ecorys chair in Sustainability and Climate Change.
Ingrid de Vries, research associate at the Centre for Sustainability and Climate Research