First movers in energy transition pave the way for industry to learn from, whether in hydrogen, in decentral energy hubs or in CCUS. Collaboration up and down the value chain and across industries is important and needs to include government, authorities, project developers, operators, suppliers and startups scale ups to enable a steeper learning curve. Integrated system thinking needs to be the new default to avoid unintended and unwanted consequences of change. And finally: the role and potential of digitisation is still often underestimated.  

These were some of the key takeaways of the third ERC event THE BUMPY ROAD TO EXECUTION on 20 November hosted by Shell and Siemens Energy. Over 200 energy professionals gathered at Campus The Hague for a full-day exploration of technical and non-technical challenges that can and do occur in the execution phase of energy transition projects.  

With over 20 expert speakers across keynotes, panels and Focus Group sessions, the event successfully delivered on ERC’s purpose to inform, to inspire and to enable networking. 
 

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Below is a summary of the plenary programme.
Reports from the Focus Group sessions will follow in upcoming ERC newsletters. 
 
All presentations as well as a summary video are available on the are ERC website.
Login with your personal login code.
Go to FORUM, select EVENTS and select 2025-11 THE BUMPY ROAD TO EXECUTION  
 

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Frans Everts, President-Director, Shell Netherlands and Renske Ytsma, Managing Director, Siemens Energy Benelux, opened the event. “First movers are vital to the energy transition,” said Frans Everts, “because they turn ambition into reality—showing that commercially viable, collaborative projects can thrive when clear demand signals exist.”

In addition, Renske Ytsma emphasised that to advancing the energy transition we need optimism, resilience, commercial viability, and above all—partnerships. Asked about the role of suppliers like Siemens Energy, Renske Ytsma responded: “Suppliers need to be able to adapt to a changing environment. They need to deliver quality cost-efficiently.” The importance of partnerships was echoed throughout the day, as no company can realise change alone.  



Dick van Dam, Climate and energy policy researcher and project manager, (PBL) followed with a keynote reflecting on progress since the Paris Climate Agreement. His message carried mixed emotions: meaningful steps have been taken, yet we’re still far from where we need to be.  

Dick van Dam demonstrated how we are currently experiencing a “two-speed transition”. Energy transition investments in “mature sectors” like renewable energy, electrified transport, power grids and energy storage is continuously rising and represents 93% globally. By contrast, investments in “emerging sectors” like nuclear, hydrogen, CCS, clean shipping, electrified heat and clean industry only represents 7% of global investments. Van Dam’s call for bold ideas and fresh strategies – in part based on the recent Sustainable Industry Lab report “Hulp bij Systeempijn” (“Help with system pain”) resonated strongly across the room. 

The first panel “Beyond the Megawatt: Scaling Renewable Power & Storage” was introduced by Marinus Tabak, COO, RWE, who stressed that there are many developments in energy transition to be optimistic about: the rapid uptake of solar PV, the price decline of battery storage. But the problem why overall energy transition goes so slowly, is that there is friction in the system everywhere. “It takes 1,5 years to build a HV grid in Eemshaven, but it took 10 years of preparations and permitting to get there.”  MarinusTabak called for a “Transition Agreement” comparable to spell out how we are going to deal with friction occurrences. 

Marinus Tabak was joined by Aizo Wiebenga, Senior Industry Advisor Energy & Sustainability Microsoft, Pallas Agterberg, Challenge Officer, Alliander and Prof. dr. Gulbahar Tezel, Partner, PwC. The panel stressed that moving from “megawatts to gigawatts” requires grid infrastructure acceleration, digital forecasting, agile permitting, and flexible markets. Digitisation and integrated system thinking emerged as a pivotal enabler. 

The second session “Hydrogen Projects Powering the Netherlands” was introduced by Roel Aretz, Asset Manager Holland Hydrogen 1, Shell. Holland Hydrogen 1 is a project with many first mover challenges. “It’s not just a bumpy road,” according to Aretz, “but a road with obstacles.” One obstacle was the grid connection in the Rotterdam harbour area. Shell wanted a closed grid, but this was not allowed. In the end a joint grid connection was established, with high additional costs. 

Aretz was joined by Hans Coenen, Member of the Executive Committee, Gasunie, Maria Kalogera, Innovations Manager Crosswind (JV Shell & Eneco) and responsible for the Baseload Power Hub and Eric van Herel, Business Manager Energy Transition, Air Products. Critical success factors in overcoming technical and non-technical challenges are adaptability and open collaboration. Finally, willingness to collaborate with ALL stakeholders is what ultimately enables building new green hydrogen capacity. It is key not to focus too much on one area like Rotterdam and Eemshaven or even on one country. To scale, you need to look – again – at the system, and the system doesn’t stop at geographical borders.  

Future Energy Leaders (FEL) of The Netherlands Kachi Umunna and Judie El Ghazzawi closed together with Maresca Demanuele from Siemens Energy with reflections from recent company visits dubbed “FEL on the Road.” The FEL visited the Green Box – a campus in Hengelo that brings together an ecosystem of about twenty companies in energy transition innovation – and the wind turbine team at Siemens Energy. Both the visiting FEL and the hosts had a great time in seeing and demonstrating innovation with their own eyes. “The technology has been developed,” said Maresca Demanuele, “Now it’s time to innovate the system.” 



The last plenary session was “First Movers, Lasting Impact: Navigating Risk & Reliability in CCUS Deployment.” Ove Dalland, Business Opportunity Director, Northern Lights, introduced the session. Northern Lights is an open access CO2 transport and storage project in Norway that started operations last August. Key lessons learned included the importance of building trust – in the system and the project and with Northern Lights’ launching customers. Northern Lights prefers not to have intermittency in the supply of CO2 – so it tries to even out supply within the system of ships and onshore storage tanks.

Dalland was joined by Wim de Jong, Advisor Market & Strategy, Twence, Marco Goense, Managing Director PSO, Porthos and Edwin de Vries, Director Offshore, Royal Wagenborg. Porthos is steadily building the infrastructure and will become operational next year. Twence started capturing CO2 last year and is mainly supplying CO2 to horticulture. Wagenborg has designed and built a ship for INEOS’ Greensand project and is capable of directly Offshore injecting CO2 into the storage reservoir.

Although all technologies needed for CO2 capture, utilisation, transport and storage are known and proven, putting these together for a project like Northern Lights and Porthos means the chain is first of its kind and learning is needed to make the connections between the different links in the chain. Future projects will benefit from the lessons of these first movers, like Northern Lights and Porthos already took lessons from previous CCS projects like Snohvit and Sleipner in Norway and Barendrecht and ROAD in The Netherlands.  

ERC NETWORK
The importance of first movers to turn ambition into reality with optimism and partnerships that Frans Everts and Renske Ytsma opened the day with, resonated throughout the hole day. The ERC Steering Board was delighted to see how the enormous turnout at the event – a platform to reinforce existing collaborations, bringing people together, sharing lessons learned, start new incitive and partnerships. In the words of our moderator Sofie van den Enk: “This network likes to network!” It does – and ERC will be back with more opportunities for that in 2026.  

The ERC Steering Committee thanks all involved in making the event a success and looks forward to connecting with you again in 2026!