Battery Day 2025 in the Netherlands

This was my second Battery Day in the Netherlands.

Last year I came for the first time and was surprised at how much battery innovation is happening here. This year the event was bigger, much better organised, and had over 600 participants. It also gained an international dimension — with Matthieu Hubert from ACC giving a keynote on the French sector, and a dedicated session on cooperation with China.

A few takeaways:

1) Scaling Dutch startups means going international. The government recognises that startups like LeydenJar, E-Magy and LionVolt cannot scale alone in the Netherlands. They need cross-border financing, partnerships with Asian manufacturers, and access to larger markets.

2) The ASML / Airbus model was mentioned several times. The call was clear: Dutch battery companies should think beyond national borders and build supplier and manufacturing networks across Europe and beyond. With more than 20,000 new industrial customers unable to connect today to the Dutch grid, massive local scale-up is out of question.

3) Push without pull. Subsidies, grants and shared facilities provide a useful push, but almost no “pull” measures exist to create a stable demand for battery technologies in the Netherlands. That gap remains critical.

4) China's cooperation was openly debated. The consensus was “yes, there should be cooperation” — but with risk management in mind. My own question to the panel on what happens in the event of a blockade or invasion of Taiwan added a layer: diversifying suppliers and technological partnerships with Korea and Japan.

5) Recycling is everywhere in the discussion. Circularity matters, but with low volumes of retired batteries expected for at least a decade, the current attention to recycling feels like a safe distraction from harder conversations about scaling and the pain points of decarbonisation.

And, of course, the best part: meeting many colleagues and making new connections — Rene Vounckx, Ashley Cooke, Kevin Brundish, Casper Peeters, Elena Orlova, Andre Schilt, Mustafa Amhaouch, Ellen Jacobs, Gunjan Kapadia, Man Yong Toh and many others, it was great to see and connect with you!

Battery Day 2025 showed both the ambition and the constraints of the Dutch and European battery ecosystem. Scaling climate technologies remains the real frontier.