Connected Energy

The energy transition is increasingly shaping our everyday lives. The shift towards electric living and mobility is necessary, but it also brings new tensions: an electricity grid under pressure, highly fluctuating prices and growing disparities between those who can and cannot invest in new energy solutions. Energy is therefore no longer only a technical challenge, but also a social and societal one. What once seemed self-evident – affordable, accessible and fair energy – is under strain.

Energy transition

With this Co/Lab, Dutch Design Foundation and Vattenfall invite design studios to explore the challenges of the energy transition from a new perspective. Not by approaching energy as an individual matter, but by investigating how energy can connect. How can positive, individual initiatives be scaled up and linked together so they also create value for others? We also want to explore solutions that go beyond the individual household and instead draw strength from scale, collaboration and solidarity. How can energy reconnect us towards 2035 by making space for bottom-up initiatives? And what role can actors within the system, such as energy suppliers, grid operators and municipalities, play in making this possible?

This Co/Lab focuses on energy as a shared responsibility and as a design challenge. We explore how collaboration at neighbourhood level can contribute to greater control, fairness and flexibility in the energy system towards 2035. In doing so, we connect to the new Energy Act, which creates opportunities for local energy production, storage and flexibility. The central design question is: How can energy reconnect us?

Within the Co/Lab, three design studios work on this question, each from their own perspective. We are open to responses at different scales: from system change to accessible, everyday interventions that make energy tangible, shareable and understandable. The aim is to develop future visions that show how sharing energy is not only functional, but also contributes to connection, inclusivity and new forms of collaboration in the neighbourhood. Not abstract futures, but clear scenarios, applicable insights and imaginative concepts that resonate with the realities of residents, policymakers, technicians and market players.

The Co/Lab functions as an experimental space in which thinking, designing and testing are encouraged, with the aim of making new directions visible and open for discussion.

The challenge

The energy transition is making energy less self-evident. Grid congestion, price fluctuations and new technologies are increasing the divide between households that can participate and those that cannot. In Co/Lab: Connected Energy, we explore how energy can reconnect people by linking and scaling individual initiatives into collective, neighbourhood-based solutions. Not only as a technical system, but as a social and service-oriented design challenge in which affordability, agency and inclusivity are central. The extended briefing provides further detail.

Who we work with

For this Co/Lab, we work with different types of designers to jointly develop a broad range of possible scenarios and solutions. We collaborate with designers who approach energy not only as a technical or economic issue, but as a spatial, social and societal design challenge. Designers who can move between scales and understand that sharing energy is inseparable from questions of space, ownership, responsibility and inclusivity.

The three selected design studios each address the challenge from their own perspective (spatial, social or service-oriented) and contribute to a shared goal: discovering new ways to organise energy collectively, affordably and in a way that strengthens connection. The concepts and outcomes are guided by the following design criteria: collective and inclusive, future-proof and adaptive, circular and sustainable, inspiring and imaginative, and system-oriented.

Throughout the Co/Lab, the design studios collaborate with experts and partners from Vattenfall. The programme offers space to experiment, imagine and test, with the aim of making new directions visible and discussable. A wide range of outcomes is possible, from future scenarios and explorations to concepts and practical applications. The designers’ results will be presented during Dutch Design Week. These outcomes are not blueprints, but a shared basis for further research, collaboration and potential system change.

For questions, please contact Lab Manager Kathelijn Voets via kathelijn.voets@dutchdesignfoundation.com.

Apply here!