Yesterday, the entire team from our Just PREPARE project on a just energy transition visited Bospolder Tussendijken. In this Rotterdam neighborhood, many residents struggle to pay their energy bills and get their lives in order in other ways as well. But there is all the more social capital.

The neighborhood is well organized and helps steer the energy transition. It has set up work-study programs that allow residents to train or retrain as installers. In one apartment building, the House of the Future has reserved the ground floor for entrepreneurs who, literally or figuratively, bring energy to the neighborhood. In a courtyard garden, people bake bread and make soup in a homemade kitchen.

This neighborhood can do a lot and does a lot. But something will also have to happen on a larger scale. Connecting people to a heating network for free is great. But it doesn't help if, after the invasion of Ukraine, the rates for heating become unaffordable because we have organized it in such a way that they move in line with the global market.

That, and other matters, we will investigate.

To begin today; later on, I will share these kinds of observations at a conference organized by NWO (which funds our and many other projects) and NERA (the club of Dutch knowledge institutions that coordinates climate research for them; I represent the University of Amsterdam in the NERA denktank).