Systems in Transition

The closing symposium of NEON Wednesday 9 December 2026, 9:30 to 18:00 Next Nature Museum (the former Evoluon), Eindhoven Free, registration required

In 2020, more than thirty PhD researchers, twenty professors and lecturers and twelve companies started work on one question: how can we speed up the transition to sustainable energy and mobility? NEON, the New Energy and mobility Outlook for the Netherlands, was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through its Crossover programme and led by Eindhoven University of Technology. This year the programme ends. On 9 December we show what six years of research produced, and we ask you to help decide what should come next.

Why NEON

NEON started from three observations about the Dutch knowledge and innovation system:

1. Innovation money goes to technologies that are close to the market, not to the ones that could matter most in the long run.
2. Technologies that work in the lab stall in society, because engineers and social scientists seldom work on the same problem.
3. Policy makers lack quantified models that show what a transition costs and what it delivers.

NEON answered each with a line of work: research into technologies such as airborne wind energy, building-integrated solar, DC grids and medium-voltage fast charging; engineers, psychologists, legal scholars and transition researchers working on the same questions; and an integral model of the Dutch energy and mobility system.

The day

Morning: what came of it. NEON's integral model was the first step towards LUX-NL, Zenmo's model of the Dutch energy system; we show what it has taught us and ask where it should go next. Power to the People, the NEON book, is discussed in an interview with its author. A keynote makes the case for disruptive research, and a panel asks how cross-disciplinary research works in practice and what a fourth-generation university looks like: a university that works on societal transitions together with companies, governments and citizens.

Afternoon: you choose. First the results, in three parallel tracks: energy technology, sustainable transport and societal change. Then workshops on what comes next: next-generation research, the step from research to practice, the NEON online course and book, and a creative workshop.

Closing. A stand-up comedian reviews the day in Dutch. The last session collects what the workshops produced and looks at the routes for funding a new generation of energy and mobility research. We end with drinks.

The full programme is below.

Who should come

The day is meant for two groups of people:

• people who want to shape the next generation of energy and mobility research, whether they work at a university, a company, a funder or a government;
• people who want to pin down what six years of NEON mean for the next steps in the energy transition, in the Netherlands, in Europe and beyond.

Practical information

Date	Wednesday 9 December 2026, walk-in from 9:30, drinks until 18:00
Venue	Next Nature Museum, Noord Brabantlaan 1A, 5652 LA Eindhoven
Language	English; the closing act by the comedian is in Dutch
Cost	Free, registration required; places are limited
Museum	Your registration includes a ticket to the museum

The Next Nature Museum is housed in the Evoluon, the building Philips opened in 1966 to show the public the technology of the future. In 2026 the building turns sixty.