Starting earlier
KPIs | Note | Unit | Result for 2022 | Target for 2023 | Result for 2023 | Target for 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Starting earlier | |||||||
Partnership agreements with municipalities | Percentage of municipalities with which the joint challenge has been experienced and formal distribution grid partnership agreements have been discussed | % | - | 90 | 100 | - | |
Irrevocable zoning plans | Number of zoning plans for transmission grid expansions with a | # | - | 8 | 12 | 10 | |
A significant part of our projects take an average of five to ten years from start to completion. In this context, project preparations often take longer than the actual construction of the station itself. Zoning plan changes and obtaining land positions and the associated planning permission often take a long time. To accelerate construction, therefore, we also focus on speeding up these procedures. After all, this will enable us to start earlier. We do so by improving coordination and cooperation with (local) authorities and professionalising our regional stakeholder management.
Cooperation with public authorities
The plans and spatial integration of our infrastructure need to be included in good time in the plans of (local) authorities. In the past year, therefore, we invested heavily in cooperating with (local) authorities, reading through plans and making partnership agreements about the distribution grid with individual municipalities and and/or per region. We partly structured our organisation by region and invested in strategic and tactical land acquisition. In accordance with our plan, we met with all the municipalities in the Stedin area in 2023 in order to discuss their plans and make agreements on spatial integration. We also managed to obtain irrevocable zoning plans for 12 expansions of our transmission grid with a spatial component.
The Neighbourhood Approach
The Neighbourhood Approach ensures that we and our municipal partners can future-proof the electricity grid in neighbourhoods in one fell swoop, so that municipalities and residents can realise their sustainability plans. Starting earlier is central to this: gaining insight earlier, making agreements earlier, making decisions earlier and earlier installation of new stations and cables.
In 2023, we held talks with all the municipalities in our service area (where our distribution grid requires expansion) on what the Neighbourhood Approach means for their municipality. We make agreements and record these in a cooperation agreement. This agreement forms the basis for a multi-year partnership to jointly accelerate the expansion of the distribution grid per municipality.
What have we learnt about construction?
By not only starting earlier, but also critically reviewing our construction processes, we will increase our speed and effectiveness. We will reduce the number of steps to be taken and focus more on supply chain cooperation. We will continue fostering effective cooperation with contractors and the drinking water companies, and make use of smart and innovative solutions. All this will help us accelerate the implementation of our construction task. This does not alter the fact that projects still take years, and we realise that there may limits to how fast we can scale up. Construction alone will not be enough. We also need to make the best possible use of our existing grids. The steps we took in this respect in 2023 are described in the next section,‘Utilisation’.
