Meeting the ambition to be energy neutral, with Peter Verlaan, CEO, Aa en Maas, The Netherlands

2025-02-25 Episode 19 Meeting the ambition to be energy neutral, with Peter Verlaan, CEO, Aa en Maas, The Netherlands
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the exec exchange 15-minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, educate, and inform other water sector leaders around the world. My name is Piers Clark and today my guest is Peter Valland, the Chief Executive at Aa en Masse in the Netherlands. Peter, wonderful to have you with us.
[00:00:19] Peter Verlaan: Thank you.
[00:00:20] Piers Clark: Now, let's jump into your history. You're a relatively new Chief Executive at Aa en Masse, but you've been with the company for almost 10 years. Tell me about your background.
[00:00:29] Peter Verlaan: My background is an engineer. And thanks for asking, Pierce. I'm an engineer, and I was always very intrigued with water and water management.
So in the whole of my career, water management is a topic number one. So, I'm very proud that the last year I could become CEO of our Water Authority.
[00:00:48] Piers Clark: Tell me about the Water Authority. Where is it? How many people does it cover? What sort of activities does it undertake?
[00:00:54] Peter Verlaan: In the Netherlands we have 21 water authorities. So, it's in different regions. We have the southern of North Brabant in the Netherlands. That's the southeast part of our country. I think around a million people live in that area. And, with our water authority, work between 600 and 800 people.
[00:01:13] Piers Clark: Just to help anyone who's not familiar with the Netherlands, how far from say Amsterdam are you?
[00:01:18] Peter Verlaan: It's only a hundred kilometers. So, it's not far.
[00:01:21] Piers Clark: The thing that everyone knows about Amsterdam is it's very flat. Is your territory very flat and does that create any particular opportunities or challenges for you?
[00:01:29] Peter Verlaan: If you think internationally, it's very flat because the difference between high and low is only 30 meters. But for the Netherlands, that's quite big. We don't have mountains.
[00:01:39] Piers Clark: Now, the topic I'd like us to start on today is around your ambition to be energy self-sufficient.
[00:01:46] Peter Verlaan: Yes.
[00:01:47] Piers Clark: Can you go back a bit and lead up to the ambition to be self-sufficient and what you've done to date and what you're hoping to do?
[00:01:54] Peter Verlaan: Yes, of course. And thanks for asking. At first, I have to look at the whole sector at the Dutch water authorities. Like 15 years, ago we had some installations that made biogas; natural gas. And some of our very talented colleagues thought we should do more about that. And from that starting point, we made the energy and resource factory. That's a combination of the 21 water authorities. And we said, "okay, we can produce energy out of our systems, and we can recover a lot of resources and raw materials from our wastewater treatment plants." And from that day on we, at our water authority, said we want to be one of the front runners. And every installation we design or redesign, it's built on the principles to getting close to energy self-sufficient.
[00:02:43] Piers Clark: So, across the country, 21 water boards that are coming together to share learning and experiences. But actually, you're responsible for the assets within your particular area. They sit within yours, but you're sharing knowledge. Is that how it works?
[00:02:56] Peter Verlaan: Yes, we build a network organization. I was also, a couple of years, chairman of that network organization and we share knowledge. We also do fundraising. We also have contact with the authorities for permits, frameworks, et cetera, to make it possible. Because a lot of things that we're doing today weren't possible 15 years ago because of legislation.
[00:03:20] Piers Clark: I get the ambition. Is it more than just putting in some high-rate anaerobic digesters?
[00:03:25] Peter Verlaan: It's just part of it. It's what we started with, the digesters. That's natural gas, but we also make green gas. Like we enhance the gas to make it a green gas. And it's certified. We also collect toilet paper and put it in the digesters so that it's more sufficient. And we have a lot of new techniques to crunch the materials to get more energy out of it.
[00:03:49] Piers Clark: Let's just pick off a couple of those because you've used some phrases there that people might not be familiar with.
Anaerobic digestion, I think people are familiar with. It's the fermentation of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. And it goes through a natural degradation process to produce biogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide. You referred to it as green gas, which I suspect is you cleaning up that biogas to enhance the methane content. Is that correct?
[00:04:14] Peter Verlaan: Yes, you're correct.
[00:04:15] Piers Clark: That's taking out the carbon dioxide or is it sweetening it by adding in some propane?
[00:04:20] Peter Verlaan: No, most of the time it's taking out the carbon dioxide.
[00:04:23] Piers Clark: And then you're injecting that into the grid or you're using it on site?
[00:04:27] Peter Verlaan: We deliver directly to some international industrial firms. That's the best way to do it so we don't have losses in the grid. We don't have anything to do with permits on the grid. We have a direct contact right now, but we are increasing the amount and then we have to feed the grid.
[00:04:43] Piers Clark: So, you have a private network, which I love that idea that you minimize the leaks, but it also means that you can agree on some independent commercial arrangements.
[00:04:52] Peter Verlaan: Absolutely. And I'm very proud that we deliver one of the largest beer manufacturers of the world. Everybody knows them in the green bottles and we are the supplier for one of the biggest plants to produce beer. And, with our gas, they produce half of their total production.
[00:05:07] Piers Clark: Is there any chance if I say the word Heineken, they'll send me they'll send me a crate?
[00:05:12] Peter Verlaan: No, not anymore. But when we started the project, it was. We had a lot of legal officers who said, "you can't mention our name because we don't want to be in contact with wastewater treatment and producing beer." nowadays, it totally flipped because Heineken is very proud that they have natural gas or green gas which is totally circular.
[00:05:32] Piers Clark: This is about you, not me, but in my past, I was commercial director at Thames Water and we produced a beer for a Christmas event that we called Reservoir Grog as a play on the word Reservoir Dogs because it was coming from water from reservoirs. So, I understand you're optimizing anaerobic digester, you're cleaning up the gas, and then you mentioned this wonderful thing around the toilet paper. So, this is about collecting high rich cellulose material, which would normally be quite difficult to digest anaerobically, but you also mentioned that you were, I think the phrase you used was, crunching it. You're breaking open that cellulose. Tell me a little bit more about that.
[00:06:05] Peter Verlaan: Yes, we're crunching with a lot of techniques. Most of the time it's with high pressure and high temperature. Then we want to crunch the raw material so that the digestion process is getting much better so you can make more gas out of it. And there are a lot of techniques right now developed by some Dutch universities or some advisement groups. And we combine a lot of techniques. Some of those are in a high experimental phase and some of those are full scale plants.
[00:06:33] Piers Clark: Are you using a particular technology on what scale are you using? Is it full scale implementation or is this a, a sort of innovation project that you're hoping will deliver big enhancements for the future?
[00:06:44] Peter Verlaan: Thermal hydrolysis, is one of the techniques. Yeah, we have a lot. I think it's too much to mention right now, but yeah, it's developing and it's developing fast.
[00:06:54] Piers Clark: I think the dream is to become energy self-sufficient. Is that on the site or as the water board as a whole? What's the ambition?
[00:07:01] Peter Verlaan: It's as the water board as whole. But I think it's nice to mention, in the EU there's new regulation. With the wastewater treatment directive it's totally renovated. Last year, it came out after a period of eight years of renewing and developing some insights. And one of the insights from the Dutch water sector was to become energy self -sufficient and it's not possible just for one plant. You can't do it, but in the combination, it's possible.
[00:07:30] Piers Clark: And you've got to do so many things. It's not just about energy generation, but it's about demand management. Are there any other schemes that you'd like to mention now?
[00:07:37] Peter Verlaan: We do a lot because this is only energy. But last five years, we're focusing on recovering a lot of other materials like nitrogen, phosphorus... Medicine residues is a very particular issue here in the Netherlands. And it's a problem in our surface water. And now we're looking at PFAS combinations. A lot of chemicals we'd like to get rid of and maybe can reuse again. We have a big program in the Netherlands and a lot of new resource recovery methods are investigated.
[00:08:08] Piers Clark: I can hear in the tone of your voice. You're loving it, aren't you? You're loving the ambition, the scale of the challenge of how can I recover these nutrients and create the products that create a whole new suite of products that might have used some value.
[00:08:20] Peter Verlaan: Yeah, our business is not very sexy for the world if you tell you're working in wastewater treatment. But if you tell a lot of people what you're doing for society, then a lot of people get very enthusiastic.
[00:08:32] Piers Clark: When I got married, I was in the middle of my PhD, which was in wastewater treatment. And I swear that my wife's family still think I'm weird 35 years on because of that.
[00:08:41] Peter Verlaan: You're not alone, Pierce. You're not alone.
[00:08:43] Piers Clark: Now, you've been chief exec for just under a year. How's it going?
[00:08:47] Peter Verlaan: You should ask the people who I work with, but for me, it's like being a fish in the water. I really love it. It's a great responsibility. I feel that every day. A lot of people, a lot of public money, but it's a great business. I'm very proud.
[00:09:03] Piers Clark: A lot of responsibilities on your shoulders. And the bit that I encourage you to keep reminding yourself is if you have a bad day, if your executive team have a bad day, the implications of that on the decisions they make will impact potentially hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people because the service you provide hinges upon you being professional every day. Now, we like to finish with a slightly cheeky question and the cheeky question I'm going to give you is what do you owe your parents? I would say, could we go back 20 years, but looking at you, and I know this is an audio podcast and people can't see it, but you look like you're only about 25. So, I'm not going to ask you what would happen 20 years. I'm instead going to ask you, "what do you owe your parents?"
[00:09:41] Peter Verlaan: Thank you. Yes, it's 47 so it's a little bit older. But I think never give up. My parents taught me that with hard labor and never giving up that you could do things you thought that would be impossible. That's what I owe them.
[00:09:55] Piers Clark: Peter, thank you very much for your time.
[00:09:57] Peter Verlaan: Thank you, Piers.
[00:09:58] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with Piers Clark. My guest today has been Pieter Verlaan from the Water Authority in the Netherlands, Aa en Maas. Thank you. Join us next time.