Offshore For Sure partners feed The Hague discussions on energy from water
A move towards policy recomendations
Offshore For Sure (O4S) | 03/12/2025
Policy message from O4S practice
From within the Offshore For Sure project, a clear message has been sent to The Hague: energy from water must become a strategic pillar in the new coalition agreement. In a letter to negotiator Van Haersma Buma, drafted by the board of the sector association Dutch Energy from Water Association (EWA), concrete recommendations are made to better anchor wave energy, tidal energy, offshore solar energy, offshore energy storage, and Blue Energy in national energy and industrial policy.
The letter is co-signed by MARIN, Buccaneer, Campus@Sea, Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), and DMEC, all closely involved in innovation and demonstration of blue-energy technologies. In doing so, the knowledge and experience from the O4S collaboration is directly connected to the coalition negotiations and the discussions on energy security, manufacturing industry, and spatial planning in the North Sea.
From demonstration to policy recommendation
Offshore For Sure tests five promising solutions in the fields of tidal, wave, offshore solar energy, and energy storage with fifteen partners from Flanders and the Netherlands, with the aim of accelerating the energy transition at sea and strengthening the sustainable blue economy. Within O4S, Bluespring and the Zeeland Environmental Federation (ZMf) work together on a policy and stakeholder track, in which bottlenecks and opportunities around permitting, experimental space, and system integration are systematically identified.
The recommendations in the letter—such as regulation-light experimental zones near the coast and in existing flood defences, a single central desk for permits, simpler demonstration funding, and long-term support for energy from water as a strategic sector—are directly informed by these O4S experiences. In this way, practical knowledge from concrete pilots is translated into useful national policy.
Voice of the project in The Hague
“With Offshore For Sure, we are showing that energy from water is not
a far-off concept, but something that can be tested and scaled up here
and now,” says project initiator and O4S coordinator Peter Scheijgrond,
who is also chair of EWA. “Especially now that the energy mix is
becoming more complex and pressure on space and grid capacity is
increasing, we need these innovative blue-green solutions to make the
system more reliable, flexible, and affordable.”
Through the joint letter, the voice of the Offshore For Sure partners—technology developers, knowledge institutes, and civil-society organisations—is explicitly heard in the formation process. The project thus confirms its role as a testing ground for technology and as a driver of smart, workable policy for energy from water in the Netherlands and Flanders.
