{"id":22670,"date":"2025-10-20T13:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T10:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ajakirimaja.ee\/energiakoalitsioon\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T10:10:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T07:10:30","slug":"power-coalition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajakirimaja.ee\/en\/power-coalition\/","title":{"rendered":"Power Coalition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Maxime Cunin of Superworld writes about designing infrastructure of and for sharing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Prologue<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In an era defined by continuous debates over transitions, energy infrastructure is often framed as a physical element in need of technical transformations. These transformations are largely assumed to be centrally driven by public institutions or private corporations. Conversations are usually crowded with engineers, economists, analysts, forecasters, and consultants debating the efficiency of\u2014insert your favourite energy source here\u2014technology. But, it must be said at this point: despite appearances, there is nothing more cultural than how we deal with infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no denying that the way we heat and power our homes has seen some upgrades in the last couple of decades, viz. technical ones. More specifically, the range of options is expanding. That new technological reality, in turn, is opening up new modes of being for infrastructure, viz. cultural ones.<\/p>\n

Given various converging advantages of using local resources\u2014they are notoriously stable in price, arguably less damaging to the environment, and which feeling of safety is sharpened at times of geopolitical anxiety\u2014groups of neighbours across Europe are coalescing to dream up and then set up their very own electrical and heating networks. Ironically, the shift from the distribution of a few massive elements\u2014centrals, pipelines, pylons\u2014to the agglomeration of many little things\u2014pumps, panels, microgrids\u2014brings the invisible infrastructure of energy into the tangible realm of the everyday. In this context of conceiving infrastructure as something other than centrally owned, who can claim to build energy infrastructure? With what purpose? And who gets to decide whether energy is shared, sold, or even gifted between neighbours? <\/p>\n\n\n

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Park Haagseweg is a small residential neighbourhood on the southwestern edge of Amsterdam.<\/em>
Superworld.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Chronicles<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Park Haagseweg (PHW) is a small residential neighbourhood on the southwestern edge of Amsterdam. It is a far cry from the city\u2019s popular postcard image. There are no historic houses, no canals, no boats. Instead, there are a couple of hundred monostylistic flat roof constructions built in the early 1990s, designed by the architectural firm Mecanoo.<\/p>\n

The almost exclusively owner-occupied homes are evenly split between single-family row houses and higher apartment blocks. On the 90s\u2019 advertising boards, the homes were proudly promoted as having perfect<\/em> insulation and connection to the city\u2019s natural gas network, as it was common then for new constructions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward thirty years to 2019, the Climate Act becomes law in the Netherlands. It becomes official\u2014the nationwide natural gas infrastructure is scheduled to retire by 2050. This high-level type of announcement, like the proverbial smoke-filled rooms, very concretely percolates into the everyday lives of most Dutch families: how will you even heat your home now, technically<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Further to the east, geopolitical instabilities emerging from Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine pushed energy prices, natural gas included, to unbearable heights. For Dutch households, the ever-growing concern on everyone\u2019s mind becomes: how will you even heat your home now, financially<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is at that moment, at the crossroads of future anxieties and present concerns, that a handful of residents of PHW gather and wonder: wouldn’t we be better off, financially and environmentally, acting together? Could we imagine our own network\u2014an energy system of, by, and for the neighbourhood?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so started the PHW Power Coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Newspaper adverts for Park Haagseweg from 1990.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Designing purpose<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 2022, Thomas Krall and myself, architects-designers of Superworld, received a call from a local resident, Hans Roeland, a Dutchman in his mid-fifties active in Amsterdam’s energy transition scene. He asked us if we could help him and his neighbours in PHW to explore how they could take collective energy action. It was an intentionally open-ended proposition, possibly involving collective retrofit, producing and storing heat in the neighbourhood, as well as sharing electricity. The initiative’s unusually undefined starting point is due to a focus on collectivity<\/em> rather on a particular technical outcome. It is a pursuit to find out what kind of infrastructure can support that focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is precisely what appeals to the designer\u2019s attitudes\u2014open-ended questions comfortable with ambiguities, as the architect-turned-institutional-designer Marco Steinberg might put it\u2014rather than the engineer\u2019s expertise in focused optimisation of answers to a singular question. This doesn\u2019t mean that engineering and financial considerations do not have their importance in the undertaking. The point is that it is firstly about designing a shared purpose and potential futures that all the residents would want to be part of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A coalition of the willing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are other energy communities around to be taken as an example, like the Schoonschip neighbourhood in Amsterdam, a cooperatively self-developed floating neighbourhood currently inhabited by 144 residents. Proudly claimed to be the most sustainable floating neighbourhood in Europe, the cluster of homes comes with its own private high-tech energy sharing network. Energy exchanges between houses are recorded by a blockchain-based local currency, hinting at a near future where this currency could give rise to a community time bank, or be traded for products in participating local shops.<\/p>\n

It is a radical vision for domestic infrastructure, with a purpose well outside of the market economy. But at its core, its unspoken, yet unmissable foundation is that it is a newly built area, formed by an intentional community of like-minded individuals, deciding to live together.<\/p>\n

The reality is quite different for a neighbourhood that has existed for over thirty years, like PHW. Here, residents are individuals with rather loose ties, who mostly did not intend to live together. There is no immediate obligation or even reason to cooperate, so part of the initiative is to create the desire to act as a collective. It is about gathering a coalition of the willing across ages, genders, party politics, social conditions, and values.<\/p>\n\n\n

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These pictures are the representation of PHW\u2019s everyday as seen through the lens of Antoine Thevenet, urban designer and photographer. Tomorrow might look similar to today, while functioning very differently. This work is part of an ongoing conversation about representing intangible changes in the built environment.<\/em>
Photos: Thevenet<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Network of everyday salons<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our aim in PHW is firstly to cultivate trust between neighbours by gardening<\/em> a fertile ground for conversations\u2014a network of everyday salons. The format of these salons varies\u2014there are framed presentations, neighbourhood assemblies, pop-in video calls, coffee table conversations, etc. Sometimes they are planned or formal, other times spontaneous or casual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To anchor these discussions in the concrete, it is necessary to form and inform different potential futures, without intending to be precise, but rather directional, and let various enabling or constraining conditions that these futures entail to emerge. These moments are simultaneously propositional and receptive. Proposed futures inform conversations as much as the conversations inform future directions. This process has resulted in co-curated visions that sit at the intersection of culture and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Together with PHW\u2019s active residents, Superworld organised events to introduce
the energy coalition opportunities to the wider neighbourhood and hear residents’ suggestions, but also to bring neighbours together as a community.<\/em>
Superworld.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Potential futures<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The investigations are both inward-looking\u2014weighing whether there is space for more solar panels, for instance, or any aquathermal and geothermal sources available\u2014and outward-looking, towards the neighbourhood\u2019s direct surroundings\u2014checking whether the data centre across the road could provide residual heat, for instance. We look into what is already there as well as what is wished for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four coherent directions have emerged, with varying degrees of collectivity, agency, and ownership, bringing to the surface different shades of energy culture they might help to cultivate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n