Henriette Mansell
Director
Henriette is a passionate consultant who drives sustainable change in traditional environments. With experience in the energy sector and a strong sense of organization and creativity, she brings structure to complex transitions. Her social commitment is reflected in her work in Rwanda and Nepal.
Marjolein ten Haaft
Manager
Marjolein is passionate about the heat and energy transition. She specializes in defining and implementing strategies and execution plans for the challenges faced by heat companies, energy suppliers, and grid operators.
Don Fontijn
Manager
Don is a creative and results oriented innovation and product manager with more than 15 years of experience building digital ventures. He moves effortlessly between start ups and corporates, validating ideas, launching products, and guiding teams from early experimentation through to scaling. As an expert generalist, he is an ideal sparring partner on a wide range of strategic and operational challenges. His passion lies in challenging the status quo, creating momentum, and inspiring colleagues to reach their full potential.
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During Create the Future, experts from COPS and Reduta Solutions demonstrated how AI and simulation are reshaping public decision making. Led by Henriette Mansell, Marjolein ten Haaft, and Don Fontijn of nlmtd, the event focused on a single question: how do we turn policy documents into a living infrastructure?
The Netherlands aims to be natural gas free by 2050. Yet more than seven million of the country’s 8.1 million homes still need to be made more sustainable. At the current pace, this goal will not be reached until around 2090. What is needed is not another policy document, but a fundamentally different way of working.
From weeks to hours
With the Energy Calculator from COPS and Reduta Solutions, municipalities can develop heat programmes in hours rather than weeks. By combining energy data, grid information, and spatial data, a shared understanding emerges that enables faster and better informed decision making. Not after the fact, but together with all parties involved.
A shared view leads to better decisions
At the heart of the approach is a simple idea: bring fragmented data together on a single platform and use real time, time based scenarios to make choices transparent. This allows municipalities, provinces, and grid operators to move from static analyses to a continuous, scenario driven process in which everyone takes part.
Key insights
- Bringing together GIS, high performance simulation, and AI on a single platform creates a single source of truth.
- Scenarios can be compared over time, for example after one, three, or five years, instead of relying on static Excel models.
- Grid congestion is no longer an afterthought, but a boundary condition that is modeled alongside heat supply and demand.
Transparency lowers the barrier
What sets this approach apart is its accessibility. Technical and non technical users work with the same data and visualizations. Assumptions, data sources, and the steps within AI and simulation models are fully traceable. This makes collaboration tangible. Municipalities, grid operators, consultants, and residents quite literally look at the same picture and can explore and weigh scenarios together.
From neighbourhood choices to system wide impact
The session included these applications:
- Combining GIS, high performance simulation, and AI in a single platform creates one source of truth.
- Scenarios can be compared over time, for example after one, three, or five years, rather than being locked into static Excel models.
- Grid congestion is not a side issue, but a boundary condition that must be modeled alongside heat demand and supply.
From demonstration to practice
The task is clear, and time is running out. If we continue at the current pace, we will not meet our targets. Tools such as the Energy Calculator help governments move from retrospective analysis to joint scenario building, accelerating decision making and increasing support.
Reduta Solutions is working with nlmtd on pilots with municipalities, grid operators, and other stakeholders to further develop this way of working within heat programmes.
