Team size: Board member, includes general responsibility with fellow board members. Direct reports: 4 departments heads (commercial strategy & sales, legal, financial advisory, marketing & communication)

What are the projects that you are most proud of working on over the past 12 months?

As a member of the board, my primary responsibilities are the day-to-day running of the company and, specifically as CCO, jointly with our commercial director, our commercial strategy and sales organisation. That being said, I act as lead counsel in complex and transactional (M&A, project financing) projects and continue to provide advice on energy markets regulation from time to time. The project in the past year that I wish to mention in particular are the legal structuring and grid access strategies for multiple stand-alone (grid-scale) and co-located battery energy storage projects. I was also lead counsel in the divestment of a ready-to-build solar field project, which saw complexities that I have never seen before in my long career as a lawyer. And also involved in the adoption of cable pooling as a permissible structure for grid access for independently owned co-located assets.

What strategies do you employ to ensure the successful digital transformation of a legal department while maintaining compliance with your country’s data protection laws?

Our legal department is exploring, and experimenting, with various AI tools. An important condition for us is that a legal tool must guarantee quality and compliance with data protection laws, otherwise we will not consider it.

What do you think sets you apart from other in-house counsel?

The legal department does not solely provide in-house counsel but is a client-facing business unit providing billable services in projects, jointly and in an integrated manner with all technical and commercial fields of expertise that Ventolines contributes to. What sets me apart personally is that I have been a partner in one of the Dutch jurisdictions premier and most profitable law firms, with an established name in the energy sector. I gave up that position to initially set up a legal department for Ventolines, essentially adding legal services to our integrated service provision. Leveraging my extensive network and my reputation as a leading energy lawyer and successfully engaging with Ventolines clients and prospective clients (landowners, developers, investors, bank), the department soon became one of the most profitable departments in the company. I moved on to the leadership team of the company one year later. From this position, I have extended my contribution to the general strategy and day-to-day management of the company as a whole.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Ventolines does not have in-house legal counsel per se. Vide supra. We expect our legal staff to be decisive and pragmatic, have business acumen, have thorough (i.e., not just legal) knowledge of the projects they contribute their specific skills to, and to be capable of providing robust and durable solutions that anticipate both the risks and the opportunities that a project may encounter during its development and over its operational lifetime. In addition, our legal staff must have the combined capability to advise on a broad range of legal areas (such as energy law, contract law, company law, cybersecurity regulations), and know when to consult a specialist lawyer.

How can general counsel foster a corporate culture that supports ESG principles and compliance across all levels of the organisation?

As a company we adhere to strict ESG policies, both in client work and within the company. To ensure that we develop bankable projects for our clients, we will see to it that ESG standards are being adhered to and implemented in every phase of the project , as applicable. Within the company we consider ESG and compliance to be a company-wide responsibility, with specific requirements applicable form department to department. On a company level, ESG and compliance are the responsibility of the management team which includes the Board. Specific legal matters may be run by the legal department for specialist legal input and review.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

AI, obviously. This is being seen by us as an opportunity to increase productivity and increase consistent and uniform ways of working and approaches. This in turn is expected to harness opportunities to standardize and productize our service offerings, which will increase their commercial scalability. This is true for specific legal workstreams (contracts, legal advice and other legal products, and legal project structuring) as much as for specific workstreams out of other departments and for comprehensive services across the fields of our expertise.

What do you think is the greatest innovation you have enacted in the past year?

I have been largely instrumental in getting the national energy regulator ACM and the Ministry of Economic Affairs to allow “cable pooling” to be applied and effectuated in the field ahead of its adoption in the law (Energy Act, primed to enter into force on 1 January 2026). Cable pooling is a solution that allows independently owned power generating, power consuming and storage assets to use a single grid connection. This has unlocked a huge potential for hybridisation of renewable energy projects, by which we mean that, by combining wind, solar PV and storage, project performance can be optimised commercially and operational constraints resulting from grid congestion can be avoided or significantly mitigated.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about?

To contribute to completing the energy transition: a safe, reliable, and climate-neutral system of energy supply, that benefits society as a whole.