During the Focus Group Heat Transition guest speakers Toyah Rodhouse of the Technical University of Delft, Hans Schneider of Liander, and Luc Brugman of HVC presented their views on the theme Organising the value chain to accelerate deployment to around 30 participants from all parts of the heat transition.

The theme lies at the heart of energy transition as the organisation of sustainable value chains still changes and can improve a lot. Toyah Roadhouse, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, explained she and her colleague Aad Correlje lead the heat program of MODES (Market Organization of the Dutch Energy System: Marktordening van het energiesysteem in 2050 | NWO) where they investigate alternative market- and government-based organisational structures that may best fit the different phases in the heat transition. They investigate these coordination options to fit the kind of technology, transaction costs, opportunistic behaviour, risks, and uncertainties of the heat transition based amongst others on the work of Nobel prize winner Oliver E. Williamson. For collective heat systems, unified governance structures seem of particular importance to make coordination work best, in which Toyah anticipates leading roles for municipalities, the state, grid operators, and heat companies to work together to plan, develop, build, and maintain them throughout the next decennia.

Hans Schneider, Advisor Energy Transition, Liander and Luc Brugman, Strategy Heat Transition HVC, confirmed this view of particular interest based on their experience and outlook. Hans emphasised how electrification and collective heat systems require intricate planning and coordination. The infrastructures form communicating vessels as collective heat can well relieve the extremely high electrification workload ahead and provide sustainable heat at lower societal costs in case heat sources and demand are available. More unified coordination and integration can help to make progress with the energy transition much easier. Policy does pick up on this as unified forms of governance start to take shape more clearly in the new energy and heat laws underway.

The view resonated with the participants who translated increasing coordination and integration as the need for more governmental leadership (in Dutch: ‘publieke regie’). Luc Brugman showed how as a public heat company HVC already brings this kind of leadership in practice in the Drechtsteden. He showed how, together with the united municipalities, they made a masterplan identifying heat clusters to develop how and in what sequence, and how they can coordinate the step-by-step development of their projects within this larger framework.

Coordination, cooperation based on such a solid masterplan created an important baseline to increase predictability for all involved to develop the impactful, infrastructural building projects to help the citizens of natural gas on to sustainable heat.
Luc noted the heat transition can still improve strongly upon this kind of coordination to unlock the potential of all parties in the heat sector to innovate, scale up, and further increase predictability and reliability for all parties in the value chain for the sake of, and together with the citizens as end users in their neighbourhoods.

As always in the Focus Groups, the presentations were followed by a lively in-depth discussion with all professionals in the room.
It is worthwhile to browse through the presentations of the session. To view them, please login with your personal login code. Go to FORUM, select EVENTS and select 2025-03-DEVELOPING VALUE CHAINS.