Building a sustainable future together
Making dreams come true, realising ambitions and implementing sustainable developments – that is what our customers want. Businesses want to expand, consumers want to make their homes more sustainable, and municipalities want to implement plans for future-ready residential neighbourhoods and districts. The share of electricity in total energy usage is about 18% today, but will rise further to above 50% in 2050. To realise all the goals our customers have in terms of living, working, well-being and prosperity, a future-proof and flexible energy system is needed. An energy system comprising sustainably generated electricity, green gas, hydrogen and district heating networks. In 2024, we worked hard on this with our colleagues, customers and contractors. Together, we are building a sustainable future as we work to achieve our goal for 2030: the ability to offer every customer a suitable and timely solution within an affordable and reliable energy system.
Our strategy is leading, with a focus on realisation, greater flexibility and communication. Working safely, in everything we do, is our golden rule. Colleagues are increasingly aware of this. Even so, last year the number of incidents involving injuries and absenteeism increased. In November, a colleague was badly injured in a very serious incident in Dokkum. Its impact was enormous; on the injured person and their family, and on the colleagues at Liander and the contractor's employees who were involved. ‘Everyone safely home’ remains the absolute prerequisite for our work, and everyone at Alliander has a responsibility in this regard.
Project implementation
Last year, we invested nearly €1.8 billion in building our infrastructure – a new record. We started more projects and more work was done. Unfortunately, we were less successful in completing projects on schedule. This was partly because the work turned out to be more complex than we initially thought, requiring more specialist knowledge. One example of this is the major NuLelie expansion project, where it became clear in late June that completion within the planned time frame would not be possible. But supply problems also caused delays. In early February, we discovered moisture ingress problems in a particular type of medium-voltage station, which led to delays in the delivery of these stations and changes to the schedules.
Due to these delays, the benefits of our increased investments were not experienced by all of our customers in 2024. Last year we once again had to disappoint business owners, because the power grid in their neighbourhood was full. Consumers are also increasingly feeling the effects of grid congestion, for example, because they have to wait longer for an upgraded connection to accommodate new solar panels.
New ways of working
We are actively pursuing new ways of working in order to increase our work output. To increase scheduling reliability, we are focusing on better collaboration within the different production chains, based on the principle of doing the right amount of work in the right place and at the right time. We are setting up agreements with contractors in order to outsource work packages more intelligently and on a larger scale. We also introduced an approach that allows customers to arrange their connection through an installer, without the intervention of the network operator. This approach reduces our implementation workload, eliminates some supply-side dependencies and results in shorter completion times for the customer Further digitalisation of our processes meant that 15% more work could be scheduled and employee satisfaction among our colleagues also increased.
Greater flexibility
We are committed to further upscaling the use of flexible solutions to get more out of the existing grid; an important building block in a future-proof energy system. We signed more than 450 flexible contracts with businesses, freeing up additional capacity. As a result, we were able to arrange earlier connection for a total of 733 companies on our waiting list. Together with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM), we introduced new contract forms that encourage and reward flexible use of the energy grids. We supported businesses through the energy hub roadmap initiated by the sector. We also started initiatives for consumers, including working with various energy suppliers on time-dependent charging of home batteries and grid-friendly private charging of electric cars.
We can get more out of our current grids by upping the permissible load.
In addition to flexible energy usage, we can get even more out of our current grids by upping the permissible load. For example, we have established new load limits for many assets, such as transformers, cables and switchgear.
Communication
We are building a sustainable future together, for and in collaboration with our customers. That is why it is important to be transparent and honest about the current situation on our grids. On the one hand, we do this to manage expectations about the future. We have started to explain more clearly what causes congestion and the impact congestion has on customer connection lead times. Additionally, we are actively communicating in the media that, based on current developments, we will continue to suffer from power grid congestion for at least another decade. On the other hand, we remain realistic, informing households and small businesses about waiting times, breakdowns and project delays.
Investments and financing
In 2024, we achieved a net profit of €976 million (2023: €267 million). If we exclude the book profit on the sale of Kenter, net profit was €219 million. The substantial increase in overall net profit is mainly due to the one-time proceeds from the sale of Kenter. Operating income for 2024 came in at €3,881 million (2023: €2,779 million). The negative cash flow for 2024 totalled €31 million. Excluding the one-time cash flow from the sale of Kenter, the negative cash flow for 2024 was €950 million (2023: €545 million).
Organisation under development
The energy transition is in full swing. Our task package is increasing and we are growing accordingly – our workforce increased last year to about 9,900 colleagues (9,400 FTEs). This was partly boosted by our successful employer's campaign – ‘The energy transition would be impossible without you’. We devoted a great deal of attention to onboarding our new colleagues to ensure employee satisfaction, safety and quality. To achieve maximum attention and focus on realising our strategy, we added an Executive Committee to our senior management structure and created two new roles, specifically a Chief Human Resource Officer position and a Chief Digital Officer position. The statutory responsibility of the Management Board remains unchanged.
We communicate about our impact on people and the environment in line with our obligation under EU regulations, and because we feel it is important to show what we are doing to increase our positive impact on society and to reduce our negative impact. This year, our sustainability statement has been brought in line with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) for the first time and reports extensively on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
Choices needed for living, prosperity and well-being
The energy transition is irreversible and presents major social challenges in relation to living, working, prosperity and well-being. Resolute choices are needed in the coming years to face up to those challenges and prevent new problems. These include both short-term choices, such as where we can build new transformer stations, and long-term choices, such as where the district heating networks should be created. There is also a need for innovation that enables us to reinvent the way we use energy and make smarter use of energy. More and more of our customers and partners are working with flexible solutions and are helping to keep the electricity grid accessible. All these initiatives show that thinking and acting differently together really does have a positive effect on accelerating the energy transition. In the interest of society as a whole, many more initiatives of this type are needed in the coming years. Every day that we succeed in collectively upping the pace benefits businesses, consumers and society as a whole.
Doing whatever it takes to keep everything working
The work of our colleagues – i.e. the results they achieve and everything they learn in the process – is indispensable. We are very grateful for their efforts. We do whatever it takes to ensure that everything keeps working. At this point we would particularly like to thank our COO Marlies Visser and our CTO Daan Schut, who will be leaving Alliander after publication of this annual report. They have put their heart and soul into our organisation and into achieving our social objectives for the past 10 and 15 years respectively.
Together with our fellow network operators, government agencies and departments, and our partners in the construction and engineering sectors, we are continuing to work confidently on building a sustainable future for all our customers.
Management Board, 3 March 2025
