Introduce yourself and your company
Max Aerts: I am co-director and co-owner of Dens. Dens is a company that grew out of a study project in 2015. We started with hydrogen-based hydrozine generators. We also provide mobile charging infrastructure in the form of batteries and powertrains for electric construction machinery. In short, we have something to offer in all aspects of zero-emission construction.
When I came across the hydrogen carrier technology at university, I thought: ‘we might have to do something with that’. We then started working on that in the form of a student team. In 2018, we did a pilot with BAM. That involved one of the first emission-free roads. Encouraged by the need that appeared to be there in the market, we started the business. Of course, the nitrogen crisis was a very unpleasant story for many companies, but for us it meant the light of life. In fact, we were already supplying and developing emission-free energy infrastructure specifically for construction sites. The need was only growing and that also meant that our business was booming. That resulted in us now being 115 employees.
Since when have you been members of ENI and why did you join?
We initially hesitated about joining because we didn’t have much financial clout yet. We had to determine our priorities first. In the end, we did see many advantages in it. The reason for becoming a member was obvious to us: we offer technical solutions to enable emission-free work in the infrastructure sector.
Where are you currently in terms of emission-free construction? Highlight a nice project.
We like to present ourselves as the backbone of the zero-emission construction site. Or its supplier. Buying an emission-free excavator is a good start, but to use it you need a solid charging infrastructure. Right now, we sell a lot of power hubs: huge powerbanks for the construction site that supply excavators with electricity.
We see that every infrastructure company has its own way of working. They also have their own preferences regarding the machines they need. Some go for the standard option and others go for a customised system that covers their needs. We pride ourselves on opting for a modular structure in which we can offer any configuration that is desirable to the customer.
A great project that illustrates this is the power hub we made for Martens and Van Oord: a system with four different charging points, where you can charge several excavators or shovels at the same time.
Whether it is really green depends on how the customer handles it. You can move such a power hub with a diesel truck. That way, there are still nitrogen emissions, although they are decreasing. Martens en Van Oord drives the power hub around in an electric truck. That’s just the way you want it. But if you look further, for example at the Dutch power grid, there is always a part that is self-generated and a part that we can call ‘green’ because we buy the rights from other countries. So there are always snags. After all, there is always a transition phase. What matters is that you start somewhere.
Incidentally, there are some projects that can be called optimal. One example is construction and infrastructure company Van der Zanden, which has an awful lot of solar panels on site. They can fully charge that power hub with solar energy within a few hours.
What are you still up against when it comes to emission-free construction?
We get a lot from the problems our clients experience. An important question is: are clients willing to pay for it?
Furthermore, electrification is moving fast, but development in the field of hydrogen is still slow. We are also running into that because we also have hydrogen systems. The market is not yet ready for hydrogen, both financially and practically. Regulations are also still lagging behind. It doesn’t hinder the progress of emission-free construction that much, but it could all go a bit faster.
What has ENI been able to do for you in this respect so far?
For us, the contact with the infrastructure builders themselves is very nice. If you want to be the backbone of the emission-free construction site, you need to know the customer’s needs. Through customer contact, we already get some of that need, but you need overarching agreements to create universal solutions, or a universal standard. That is where ENI is very valuable to us.
Do you have any tips for us to work on in the near future?
Within the network, we are doing our best to get some kind of uniformity. I advocate that we also focus together on something else, namely EMC safety. An electrical system always has a magnetic field around it. Example: If someone with a pacemaker walks past that, such a device could go haywire as a result. I think it would be a good step to work on this with the whole industry.
What can you do for other ENI members?
I think we can give good advice on how to work, depending on the type of work. In fact, that’s where we see a lot of difference. One company drives up and down with a battery every day. Another, like Van der Zanden, only moves the battery once at the weekend, to charge via solar panels. Ultimately, that’s a piece of practice, but that also translates to a certain price per kilowatt-hour. We can inform ENI members about that.
It is 2026… Where are we as the Netherlands in terms of emission-free building?
If you look at how things are going in Europe, we can conclude that we are doing well in the Netherlands. We are leading the way, while in the rest of Europe very little emission-free heavy duty equipment leaves the factory. So the Netherlands is doing well compared to abroad. Certainly also in terms of the request for tenders by the Dutch government.
However, if you look more concretely at the targets of ‘Rijkswaterstaat’ for 2028, for instance, you realise again that it will be a lot of hard work.