Noor Veenhoven

In the past decade, we have witnessed a surge of cooperatives across society. From community-led energy projects to endeavours in collective mobility and housing, citizens and companies are increasingly organizing themselves to shape their surroundings, often driven by sustainability and social goals and most of them do this in a not for profit way. Despite this rich history and the ongoing proliferation of initiatives, cooperative efforts and their benefits often remain small-scale and localized and, in most cases, accessible only to specific and select demographics.

This challenge aims to help civil society organizations in the energy domain, such as energy cooperatives, to become more mainstream. We aim to create recognition, to create an understanding of mutual interests with the key stakeholders they have to work with, and to exchange knowledge for these organizations to grow faster or repeat.

The underground is filled with infrastructure and other assets, including electricity cables, fibre optic cables, gas pipelines, heat networks, sewers, and more. Additionally, underground spaces host natural elements crucial for maintaining a healthy urban environment, such as soil essential for urban trees. Consequently, various stakeholders regularly need access to the underground, each with their own interests, creating significant pressure on the underground. Frequent excavation leads to disruptions, extensive damage, and trees that don’t age past 60 (which is very young for trees).

Improvements can be made by enhancing collaboration among stakeholders, sharing more data, and collectively planning underground activities. Understanding the interests of all involved parties is crucial to developing an action plan aimed at enhancing the quality and management of the underground.

Circular initiatives often struggle to progress beyond the pilot phase, including circular charging infrastructure. Numerous barriers hinder these circular initiatives:
• Lack of data on products and how circular/sustainable they are.
• Difficulty in implementing circularity across the entire production chain.
• Regulatory obstacles.
• Current higher costs associated with circular production, leading to more expensive products.
To overcome these barriers, adjustments to regulations are necessary to better align with circular initiatives, alongside the establishment of shared ownership within the production chain.

Professionals in the field of circularity and sustainability may experience "eco-emotions," a spectrum of feelings which can have both negative and positive effects on mental health. Eco-emotions arise from ecological crises, such as climate change, and can lead to stress, fatigue, and a sense of powerlessness, but also heightened motivation for professionals.

This work session, led by Marian Zandbergen (CIRCOLLAB, HvA) and moderated by Mareille de Bloois (Royal HaskoningDHV) on the 14th of December, explored the challenges and opportunities associated with eco-emotions, both personally and within organizations. The key question addressed was: How can individuals and organisations constructively manage eco-emotions, and what implications does this have for organisations?

Defining eco-emotions

Eco-emotions are feelings resulting from ecological crises, which can be categorized into backward-looking and forward-looking emotions.

• Backward-looking eco-emotions: include eco-guilt, eco-grief, and eco-anger about past events, such as feeling guilty about the carbon footprint of a vacation flight.
• Forward-looking eco-emotions: encompass eco-anxiety, and focus on current and anticipated future decisions. While eco-anxiety can drive proactive engagement with ecological issues, excessive amounts may lead to feelings of helplessness.

Negative eco-emotions can thus harm your mental health and can even lead to burnout. Therefore, it is important to use strategies to counter the negative effects of eco-anxiety.

Changing attitudes - taking action
Attitudes shape behaviour, and self-efficacy—the belief in one's ability to contribute to problem-solving—is crucial. Concrete action perspectives empower individuals, fostering a sense of control over problems and mitigating feelings of helplessness of eco-anxiety.

Social support - acting as a group
Collaborative efforts within a group can positively impact perceived self-efficacy. Strong collaboration can turn negative effects of eco-anxiety into positive outcomes. Trust and shared motivation play vital roles in effective collaborations, fostering understanding across personal and organisational perspectives.

In the group - recognition and solutions

The participants of the workshop shared personal experiences of eco-emotions and brainstormed constructive ways to incorporate these emotions into circular transition collaborations. Ideas included conducting organizational research to understand the extent of eco-emotions and gain insight into personal motivations in businesses and collaboration, and demonstrating how intrinsic beliefs contribute to shared goals.

Proposed solutions
To address eco-emotions within organizations, various methods were proposed, including workshops with inspiration and practical applications, an HR framework, 'meet & share' sessions featuring talks with industry leaders, and personal purpose hours.

Marian expressed a desire to continue researching this topic, inviting contributions through qualitative interviews within organizations. Are you interested in contributing to this research, please let me know in the comments, or email me at noor@amsterdamsmartcity.com.

Grid congestion is becoming increasingly significant and will start to pose a problem in the low-voltage network in the coming years. This will prevent homeowners from transitioning away from gas, result in low efficiency for their solar panels, and could make it impossible to have a charging station at their doorstep. Alliander does not want to hinder the energy transition. Therefore, they are looking for a way to involve homeowners in the issue of grid congestion and provide solutions that are still feasible with a crowded grid.

In the energy work session on the 14th of December, Wouter van Rooijen (Alliander) discussed the challenges related to grid congestion. From 2030 onwards, it is expected that a significant portion of the low-voltage network will experience both over- and under-voltage. While the network will be reinforced as quickly as possible, the lack of labour capacity is also prompting the consideration of alternative solutions.

The solution that emerged from Wouter's co-creation process was WijkWise. In this work session, Wouter aimed to validate the WijkWise concept and find parties that could contribute to its development and market implementation. Dave van Loon from Kennisland moderated the session.

WijkWise – Understanding the neighbourhood's grid situation

The WijkWise concept focuses on three problems:

• The growth of grid congestion at low-voltage
• Homeowners' uncertainty about making sustainable investments. For instance, because they may not know if their solar panels will yield a good return.
• Homeowners' lack of awareness regarding the impact their choices have on the stability of the grid.

The proposed solution:
"With WijkWise, Alliander continues to facilitate homeowners in making their homes more sustainable. Alliander does this by providing insight into the neighbourhood's grid situation and recommending the best investment. Residents can make informed choices that contribute to payback time, comfort, and certainty. A good choice benefits both the homeowner and the grid operator."

The idea is to provide more insight into the neighbourhood's grid situation and offer tailored advice for home sustainability. This way, homeowners can determine whether they should invest in insulation, a heat pump, or solar panels.

Alliander does not want to develop this concept alone, but is seeking partners to bring this concept to market.

Discussion

After the concept presentation, a brief discussion followed. The main questions raised were:

• Can providing insight into the neighbourhood's grid situation have (negative) effects on the housing market?
  → They don't know yet; further investigation is needed.
• Can this data be shared freely?
  → The data shared will be at the neighbourhood level (transformer level) and not in real-time (monthly). If there is user data involved, consent must be obtained.
• What behaviour change do you expect?
  → That, during the investment moment, consideration will be given to the grid situation for the most advantageous investment.

After the discussion, we worked in groups with the Empathy Canvas from Kennisland to view the WijkWise concept from the perspective of the homeowners. This tool helped us really view the problems from the perspective of a homeowner.

Empathy Mapping

In three groups, we delved into the homeowner's situation. The recurring themes in the empathy maps were:

• A sense of unfairness for the homeowner. They invest in sustainability and are rewarded with grid congestion problems.
• A feeling of uncertainty for the homeowner. They want assurance that their investment will yield results.
• Little trust in the grid operator and the government. First, everyone had to get solar panels, and now suddenly it doesn't fit, and net metering is being discontinued (or not?)
• Limited understanding by homeowners because they find it very complicated and don't want to delve into it. It's not an urgent problem for them.
• Collaboratively seeking solutions can be very positive, but can also lead to friction.

Alliander plans to take the next steps with this concept in 2024. In 2024, they are planning to do the follow-up research, make the minimal viable product, and launch the first version of the product at the end of the year.

Do you know of any stakeholders that absolutely need to be involved, or would you like to be involved in the implementation of the WijkWise concept? Please contact Noor at noor@amsterdamsmartcity.com. Special thanks to Wouter and Dave for this interesting session.

Following the Data Dilemmas event in October, which focused on underground infrastructure, this deep dive session delved further into the question: How can we look under the ground without digging? The session began with an introduction by Alliander, followed by additional insights from Port of Amsterdam, Eurofiber, City of Amsterdam, and Stedin. After exploring the issue, various parties pitched their solutions.

The problem of Alliander

Alliander is anticipating a significant workload in the next 2-10 years, requiring a lot of resources (personnel, materials, and services). We are transitioning away from gas, which means that many gas connections have to be removed. Currently, Alliander is removing around 12,000 connections per year, this is expected to increase to around 100,000 in 2030.

The primary challenge in the removal process is locating the gas line. Due to missing or outdated drawings, ground subsidence, or discrepancies between installation and location, they are often difficult to locate. This leads to time-consuming and costly excavation and often excavation damage.

Alliander employs several search methods to locate the gas lines:

• Probe: This is a probe that can be entered via the main gas valve, with a transmitter so that you can trace it from the outside.
• Gas camera:  Attached to the probe to see where the gas connections are.
• Ground penetrating radar (GPR): Sonar scan of the ground.
• Chenny: Similar to probe.
• Frequency on metal tubes: For metal pipes, you can set a frequency on the pipe that can be detected.
• Ultra-sonic: By putting a sound signal on the pipe you can register the vibrating gas molecules with a microphone.

These techniques are not always sufficient and come with many drawbacks. This is why Alliander is seeking a better way for technicians to know where to dig without opening the ground.

Additional Insights

Additional insights from various stakeholders highlight common challenges related to underground infrastructure. The main problem is that the data of the underground is not the same as the real-time situation. This leads to scanning methods being necessary in the first place.
The data which is documented is also lacking because it doesn’t show things such as ground pollution, and the z-coordinate (depth) is also missing. There is potential for improvement since most parties have better databases of their own assets. This data is unfortunately not shared since it is not required by KLIC (Information and Coordination Center for Underground Infrastructure).

Solution Pitches

1. SpectroAG – Hamed Mehdipoor: Combines GPR, electromagnetic wave emission, robots, and drones to scan large ground areas in high resolution. The data is analyzed by an AI Brain Cloud, providing a 3D representation of asset locations. Challenges may arise in areas with clay ground, since this is always a problem with GPR.

2. Inframent – Marina Kurnevich: A startup addressing asset registration issues. Their solution involves taking photos of open trenches with a smartphone or tablet, instantly uploading them to their application, and adding location data. This ensures immediate and accurate registration of underground data.

3. Infratags – Henk Schwietert (Evalan): Their passive (no battery) RFID tags (Infratags) can be attached to cables and connection sleeves, allowing easy identification above ground using a scanner. The low-cost tags, around 50 cents each, can easily help find tagged assets. However, challenges include conflicting interests and delayed returns on investment. The Infratag was developed in collaboration with Tallo.

4. HvA Sensorlab - Marcel van der Horst: While not offering a direct solution, HvA Sensorlab has students capable of working on the problem. They have access to advanced equipment for developing or improving solutions.

5. VLabs – Diemer Cohen Stuart: Uses GIS data and Augmented Reality (AR) to visualize accurate geodata through AR glasses. This simplifies operational work, improves quality control, and allows for on-site guidance with work instructions. The glasses provide 5-10 cm accuracy, with a cost of 8500 euros per pair.

Are you interested in any of these solutions, would you like more information, or do you have an even better solution? Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Noor – noor@amsterdamsmartcity.com, or leave a comment below. We will continue with this topic in 2024!