On 7 April 2025, over 50 energy professionals, including financiers, developers and technical consultants, gathered at Dentons’ Amsterdam office for an evening dedicated to the future of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the Netherlands. 

Following a warm welcome from our hosts—Sanne Jeurissen, Energy lawyer at Dentons and Bas Legger, candidate civil-law notary at Dentons specializing in Energy and Real Estate—it was time for our two guest speakers to take the floor.

Björn Hofman, senior advisory associate at Aurora Energy Research (Aurora), was up first. Aurora offers market-leading forecasts and data-driven insights for the global energy transition. Björn, a BESS specialist, thoroughly explored Aurora’s research on the outlook for BESS in the Netherlands, focusing on the business case for BESS projects.

Björn started off by highlighting that, since 2021, the utility-scale battery capacity in the Netherlands has grown almost six-fold, with a 2.4GW pipeline set for deployment in the coming years. He pointed out the increased need for flexibility within the Dutch energy system as dispatchable power plants are being phased out. This flexibility is necessary to integrate an increasing share of intermittent renewable generation and bridge the gap between supply and demand for electricity. This is where BESS come into play. BESS can generate strong revenue in the Dutch market according to Björn, driven by the potential to stack revenues, for example from trading on wholesale markets and creating value from ancillary services/balancing.

With the new grid fee structures, which are or soon will be available, such as the non-firm connection and transport agreement or time-based transport rights, the financial burden of high grid fees—a major drawback for BESS business cases in the Netherlands—appears to have been addressed. Other upsides to the business case for BESS could potentially be found in financial asset-backed trading, capturing extreme price events and a capacity remuneration mechanism.

Following Björn’s presentation, Lars Rupert, co-founder of Catalise Energy (Catalise), took the stage. Catalise is a newly established company and an innovative risk management partner in the renewable energy sector.

At the start of his presentation, Lars pointed out that the business case for BESS projects is complex. Securing revenue is one of the key challenges for BESS projects in the Netherlands. As a solution to this issue, Catalise provides bankable leases for BESS projects, supported by an A-rated obligor default policy, providing a high level of certainty for lenders and investors, while maintaining the ability to optimize revenues. Catalise’s approach separates risk and revenue, granting developers long-term security while retaining flexibility to select the best BESS operator. By showing example calculations, Lars displayed the positive impact of the leases on the financing metrics of BESS projects. Lars concluded his presentation with a brief description of the demonstration projects that Catalise is currently working on.

Following these insightful presentations a lively Q&A session ensued. This Q&A transitioned into a networking event, where many old connections were strengthened, and new connections were formed. We look back on this event with great enthusiasm and look forward to hosting many more energy events at Dentons. We thank our guest speakers Björn Hofman and Lars Rupert once again for their valuable contributions.

Bas Legger, Emile Hallo and Sanne Jeurissen