NEON Research (New Energy and mobility Outlook for the Netherlands) will accelerate energy and mobility transitions in the Netherlands through agent-based transition models. These models will be developed through interdisciplinary research into the behavioural, technological, and societal dimensions of transitions and will be empirically tested in living labs.
NEON seeks to address three connected societal challenges: climate action, renewable energy, and sustainable transport. The research context of the Netherlands is lagging on these challenges as it is for example one of the slowest adopters of renewable energy in Europe. The NEON consortium has identified three main barriers for scientists to address in this context:
- Promising technologies are underfunded
- Technological solutions fail to incorporate insights on the societal dimensions of transitions
- Transitions research lacks quantified actionable models for policymakers
NEON’s 33 PhD researchers will therefore investigate solutions such as airborne wind energy, Mobility-as-a-Service and critical societal perspectives such as mobility justice, while collaborating on integrated agent-based transition models. These models will deliver context-sensitive scenarios that stakeholders can use to find desirable transition pathways.
NEON can achieve this thanks to a consortium of universities, NGOs, businesses, and government bodies that will collaborate in living labs to put the scientific insights of NEON to the test. The city of Rotterdam and province of Noord-Brabant are key partners for these labs and will benefit from NEON’s integral approach and the opportunity to research the social and technical impacts of new technologies in a learning-by-doing setting. In turn, the living labs will further refine NEON’s agent-based models with empirical validation and improve their value for policymakers.
