Systems in Transition · NEON closing symposium · Wednesday 9 December 2026 · Next Nature Museum (the former Evoluon), Eindhoven Programme · registration opens soon →

News from NEON

17 stories from the programme, from the former NEON website.

23 September 2025

Wall of fame: NEON graduates

The NEON project is made up of more than thirty PhD researchers who are all working on a different aspect of the energy transition. A highlight in any academic’s life is defending your thesis and finally getting your PhD…
21 November 2023

The NEON Poster Wall

The NEON Poster Wall For a quick overview of topics that NEON’s researchers are working on, have a look at the posters below! (Click to enlarge.)
18 September 2023

Come and meet NEON at the Ecomobiel trade fair in Den Bosch!

On October 10-11-12 2023, NEON will be at the Ecomobiel/Vakbeurs Energie trade fair in the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch for their annual demo. NEON’s bright young researchers work on a rich variety of topics, all with a co…
31 July 2023

How a recent attack on 100% renewable models might end the trench warfare and benefit our climate

Or why bickering over facts is a step in the right direction Thursday evening (July 27, 2023) Seaver Wang of the Breakthrough Institute published an attack on 100% renewable papers and took specific aim at the group at L…
6 May 2023 · Renewable energy

Copper scarcity will not materially slow down the energy transition

Auke Hoekstra, director of NEONresearch, a.e.hoekstra@tue.nl, @aukehoekstra Abstract Many scientific publications assert copper scarcity is a roadblock on the way to renewable energy, but almost none take substitution in…
9 February 2023

The first NEON Q-celebration!

Written by Youn and Tessa We would like to introduce the new collaboration and reflection approach this year at NEON: “Q-celebration”. At this quarterly event, NEON PhD candidates present and spark their cross-disciplina…
9 February 2023

NEON DEMO 2

On October 11 2022, the second NEON demo took place. For this occasion, we were guests at the Ecomobiel/Vakbeurs Energie trade fair in Den Bosch. This fair welcomes ~7000 visitors a day, so we had quite the audience! Als…
7 February 2022

Sprinting towards NEON demo 2 and beyond

Summary NEON was financed to produce a yearly New Energy and Mobility Outlook for the Netherlands. In this article, we will elaborate on the governance structure for NEON as the team gets used to working towards that goa…
2 February 2022

Bipolar dc grid patent

Bipolar dc grid is a promising solution for future power distribution grids for land, sea and space. These grids have higher power transfer capability when compared with 3 phase ac grids and unipolar dc grids. In case of…
17 January 2022

NEON demo 2021: shining light on the research team

On the 29th of Oktober NEON held its first yearly demo. A year had passed since the NEON kick-off in 2020. It was a very tumultuous and unexpected time for all of us during this global pandemic, which for NEON has meant …
2 November 2021

Why we must move beyond doomsday scenarios in order to save the planet

This theme has been nagging me for a long time but a recent piece in Wired called made me decide to pre-publish a snippet of a scientific article I’m writing on this. The piece that triggered this post concludes: It’s ti…
16 September 2021 · Me@NEON

Me@NEON Sofia Rosero

Moving to the Netherlands has been completely eye-opening for me in more than one way. I came here to pursue a Master in Political Sciences and had a completely different future pictured ahead of me. However, I had the l…
16 September 2021

Governance for accelerating the energy transition

Technical standards, you might think? Why are these relevant here? With companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon ruling the digital world, isn’t standard-setting an obsolete activity carried out by aged men with big b…
27 July 2021 · Me@NEON

Me@NEON: Olaf Borsboom

I remember the first time that I felt like I was right in the middle of the future. I was sitting in the passenger seat of one of the first commercially available electric cars in the Netherlands, and the driver pressed …
27 July 2021

Electric Powertrain Simulation

In Work Package 4, I, Theo Hoffman, investigate together with co-supervisors Pascal Etman and Mauro Salazar how to design small series of electric vehicles in a cost-effective manner. On the 29th of June, we held the fut…
21 June 2021

Wind worries and smart solutions

In this first NEON research blogpost, I will introduce a range of partners, principal investigators and PhD candidates around an important topic that has gotten a lot of (critical) attention recently: wind power. What ar…
16 June 2021 · Me@NEON

Me@NEON: Helena Schmidt

How very urgent the situation around climate change is, only dawned upon me at the beginning of 2019 when the international climate movement, inspired by Greta Thunberg, was all over the news. At the time, I was finishin…