Interview Digital Energy Joanne Zaaijer & Michel Chatelin

1. What exactly is Digital Energy, and why are you launching this proposition now?

Michel Chatelin: “Digital Energy is not a buzzword for us, but the reality of the energy market. The energy system has traditionally been physical: cables, pipelines, meters, installations. There is now a data layer on top of that. Without that layer you cannot run a flexible system, solve congestion or properly organise new services such as aggregation, peer‑to‑peer or community models. Digital Energy is precisely that combination: the physical energy chain plus data, software, platforms and the legal frameworks that go with them.”
Joanne Zaaijer: “Why now? Because developments are moving fast. The bottlenecks are no longer only in permits or grid connections, but in the linkage between assets, data and markets. We see grid congestion, explosive growth of flexible assets, digitalisation of trading and measurement data, and at the same time new European and national rules that affect data, cybersecurity and market organisation. Clients can no longer afford to treat energy and digitalisation as two separate worlds. Digital Energy is our answer to that: one integrated team that understands technology, the energy market and the data landscape, and that can think along from strategy and structure through to contracts and compliance.”
 

2. What types of organisations is Digital Energy mainly aimed at, and what concrete issues do you see coming up for these clients?

Michel: “We focus on parties operating at the interface of energy and digitalisation. Think of developers and operators of solar, wind, storage and heat; aggregators and flexibility service providers; energy cooperatives and energy communities; grid operators; industrial off‑takers with their own assets; data centres; EV charging operators; technology companies that supply software or IoT solutions for the energy sector; and platforms that trade in energy, flexibility or measurement data.”
Joanne: “We support clients with all legal issues arising from the digitalisation of the energy sector. The issues are very practical. Who is allowed to use which data from a smart meter or a battery? How do you allocate roles and risks in a virtual power plant? How do you align contractually with GOPACS or other congestion markets? How do you tokenise or digitise participation in a local energy system without breaching the Energy Act, consumer protection rules or competition law? And how do you keep a project bankable when more and more of the value lies in data and algorithms, and not only in the physical installation?”
 

3. You work together from the Tech/Data and Energy practices. Why is that combination so important for Digital Energy, and how do clients notice this in the way you advise them?

Michel: “Because otherwise the advice is incomplete. An energy lawyer who does not take the data side into account produces a contract or structure that gets stuck in practice. A tech or privacy lawyer who does not know the energy sector overlooks the sector‑specific rules: supply obligations, metering responsibility, grid codes, balance responsibility, ACM supervision, SDE conditions, congestion management. Those worlds need to come together in a single conversation.”
Joanne: “Clients notice this because we do not advise in silos. We look in one go at the market role, the contract, the data flow, competition risks, the relevant obligations from all angles and how to implement them. That provides a complete picture up front and saves remedial work afterwards. It prevents you from building a beautiful platform that does not legally fit into the energy system, or an energy project that is unusable from a data protection perspective.”

4. Increasingly, energy projects are actually data projects, for example smart meters, trading platforms or flexible assets. What legal challenges do organisations face in these cases, and how does the combination of Tech/Data and Energy help to get this right?

Michel: “In these types of projects there is rarely a single isolated problem. Organisations run into uncertainty about whether they are allowed to use, share and store data; questions around who is liable if an algorithm steers incorrectly; and tension between open data sharing – needed for flexibility – and confidentiality, cybersecurity requirements and competition concerns. For trading platforms there is also the boundary between being a purely facilitative platform and holding a regulated market role. For flexible assets: who is allowed to control them, under what conditions, and what happens in case of grid constraints or an outage?
Joanne: “From the Energy side we look at market organisation: what role you play, what licence or registration you need, how this relates to the grid operator and to ACM. From Tech/Data comes the set‑up of processing operations, contractual data arrangements, IP in algorithms and compliance with digital regulation. Together you can create a structure that holds up both within the energy system and within the data landscape. That is the difference between a pilot that never progresses and a model you can scale.”
 

5. To make it very concrete: what outcome can clients expect from Digital Energy? How does your combined Tech/Data and Energy advice translate into business terms such as risk reduction, better decision‑making, new revenue opportunities or faster implementation of digital solutions?
 

Michel: “Three things. One: a lower chance that a project will later be halted because of a regulatory or contractual gap – that is direct risk reduction and often also better bankability. Two: faster time‑to‑market, because we address bottlenecks at the front end instead of after the software is already live. Three: new revenue models that are actually sustainable. Flex trading, aggregation, local exchange, data‑driven optimisation – that only becomes revenue if the legal allocation of roles is correct.
Joanne: “Put simply: you know whether you can offer a service, under what conditions, with whom you may share data, and how you record this contractually so that investors, grid operators and off‑takers have confidence in it. That is not a legal luxury. It is the prerequisite for being able to earn digitally in a regulated sector.”
 

6. In what ways does your approach with Digital Energy differ from the more traditional way in which advisory firms look at the energy sector? What do you hear about this in conversations with clients?

Michel: “The traditional view is often: project, permits, PPA, connection, subsidy. Important, and we continue to do that. But Digital Energy starts one step earlier and one step later. Earlier: what data model and what market role underpin the project? Later: how do you scale it, how do you connect it to platforms, how do you keep it compliant when regulation and technology are both evolving?”

Joanne: “What we hear back is that clients notice we speak the language of both the asset manager and the product owner. They do not have to make the translation themselves between ‘this is how the grid works’ and ‘this is how our software processes data’. That translation is the advice. And they appreciate that we do not stifle innovation with a list of risks, but help to structure those risks so that the project can actually go ahead.”

7. Looking ahead to the coming years: which digital developments do you think will change the energy sector the most, and what should companies already be doing now to prepare?

Michel: “Three developments. First, the digitalisation of flexibility: batteries, EVs, heat pumps and industrial loads that automatically respond to price and grid signals. That shifts value from kilowatt‑hours to controllability. Second, data sharing and interoperability: those who do not have their data architecture in order will not participate in the markets of tomorrow. Third, tokenisation and distributed participation models. Not as hype, but as a way to make local ownership, rights and settlement scalable. We already see this in projects such as Power of the Many on Ameland and in European sandboxes.”

Joanne: “What should companies already be doing now? Take three simple steps. Map out what data you generate, receive and need, and with whom you want or are required to share data. Determine which market role you want to play – and which you explicitly do not want to play. And design contracts and governance now in such a way that you are both flexible and protected, also for future developments such as new linkages with platforms and new collaborations. Those who get this right will be ahead not only legally, but also commercially.”