Nils Rosmuller is professor of Energy and Transport Safety at the Institute for Physical Safety (IFV). He is an expert at the intersection of the energy transition, safety and assistance. And he's busy. Rosmuller teaches, presents webinars from his own IFV research and he is often asked to take a seat in a sounding board group or a supervisory committee. During the interview it quickly becomes clear why. Rosmuller understands the art of explaining in jip-and-janneke language where the shoe pinches. And he does not hesitate to give his opinion. "Of course it's great that the government is spending an extra seven billion euros for the energy transition, but what part of that is spent on public safety?"

What is your role as a lecturer at the Institute for Physical Safety?

"It sounds a bit anarchic, but I can do whatever I want. I am not hindered in my work by policy guidelines or anything else and am allowed to give my opinion on developments in CO2 emissions, geothermal energy, wind energy, biomass and solar energy. In addition, I am involved in the safety of hydrogen, batteries / accumulators and sustainable building materials. That's great, because let me first state that no one is against accelerating the energy transition. Neither do I, but we have to do that transition in a safe way."

What can you do?

"We try to be as visible as possible in the field, so that we can bring our (safety) message to the fore. As an institute, we usually have insight into the consequences of accidents, but less into causes and even less into how often something happens. Incidentally, we are aware of the fact that we are in that final line of defense, but we increasingly try to draw attention to safety (early line of defense) at an early stage. If a manufacturer already takes safety aspects into account during the design of a product, this saves a lot of misery afterwards. Take the electric car as an example. If the battery pack is the cause of a fire, a lot of water is needed to cool the car. But actually you want to get that water, which now mainly bounces off the hood and on the casing of the battery, with those battery cells, so that you effectively cool. The best thing is an internal extinguishing system, or rather: an inherently safe battery technology. That would save a lot of immersion containers and especially a lot of water."

So you can put some kind of extinguishing system under the hood?

"In fact, you can even install an extinguishing system in the battery, but then you have to want that. I often wonder why the safety aspect has penetrated in some industries and not in others? Incidentally, this does not only apply to the car industry, there are countless examples that show that more attention in the design process could have prevented a lot of misery afterwards."

Do the risks posed by the energy transition lead to a shift towards more prevention?

"We only welcome this shift. It may sound a bit corny, but prevention is still better than cure. In addition, risks are getting closer and closer to the citizen. You used to have a large power plant on the outskirts of the city, with a large fence around it, a safety management system and an operator nearby. Now we are more or less our own energy company. We have solar panels on our roof, an electric car in front of the door, a power wall in our house and sometimes we buy or sell the energy from or to the neighbors."

Does this also increase the risks?

"Above all, they become different. You can only partly compare the fire course in a fossil-powered car with that of an electric one. The temperature build-up is much slower with the latter, but the fire can sustain itself for hours or even days. That is really different than a fire in a 'normal' car that is extinguished within an hour. And look at a development like hydrogen. In industry, the use of hydrogen is not so new, but it is relatively easily flammable and is now much closer and perhaps also in our homes in the future. That poses very different risks than when you heat your house with gas. Incidentally, hydrogen does not lead to carbon monoxide poisoning, so that is an advantage."

What do you see as the biggest risk?

"The behavior of people, which I regularly call 'unconscious and incompetent'. The scary thing about this is that we, but also the fire brigade, insurers or the government, often do not have a view on such behavior. People can craft their own batteries at home or store energy for later, but who says those people are skilled? Imagine that someone stores all kinds of energy at home, sometimes in self-manufactured storage systems, and there is a fire. If the fire brigade comes and opens the meter cupboard to turn off the electricity, what happens? The fire brigade is not aware of that extra storage elsewhere in the house at that time. For example, everything and anything happens in homes and neighborhoods. We just don't know what, because it's behind the front door and so it's out of our sight."

Do we all underestimate the risks?

"I use the words unconscious and incompetent consciously. That says it all, right? Because do the homeworkers realize how much energy is stored in such a battery? Do they understand the risks involved? Do they know, simply put, what happens when things go wrong? I don't mean that derogatorily either, but a lot of what goes wrong is because of that unconsciousness. People think it doesn't hurt to put an extra battery on their e-bike, but maybe that battery is damaged, without you seeing it? If you don't know something, you don't see it. This is also the case with risks. And that is why we are there, sometimes like a louse in the fur, to point out that safety and tell you that a battery can also have invisible damage and can be dangerous if you have dropped it. I think insurers have the same mission."

Who is the first to take the opportunity not only to point out safety, but also to actually take action?

"I think the government should take the lead. The IFV is not a normative institute. And let's face it, everyone wants that energy transition. So do we, but if we want to do it quickly and well, more money is needed and more attention to safety. If a few billion extra is spent on the energy transition, then surely we can also expect that policy notes have thought about safety around directional charging in inner cities or how to safely place solar parks and wind turbines on land and in the sea?"

Who is 'the' government?

"Good question. I think the government sometimes asks itself that. It is really a very good thing that Economic Affairs and Climate no longer fall under one ministry. These are two completely different interests. There is now a very important role for the Ministry of Climate, but the Ministries of Infrastructure & Water Management and the Interior will also have to work. At the very least, they will have to create the frameworks for spatial, transport and building safety."

So safety needs to be tackled in a more segmented way? Each ministry has its own share?

"Yes, integral always sounds so nice, but there are so many different facets to the energy transition that you cannot leave it to one ministry. Spatial safety falls under Infrastructure & Water Management and Home Affairs is responsible for building safety. And then we haven't even talked about product safety."

In a video on YouTube you talk about human behavior and give as an example that citizens dump a lithium battery in household waste without any awareness. Who should tell that citizen that he better not do that. Also the government?

"P.O. Box 51 doesn't seem so crazy to me in this case. We have to try to get behind that front door more. Just as happened with smoke detectors with the Fire Safe Life campaign. People are now aware of the proper functioning of smoke detectors and, moreover, there will be a legal obligation as of 1 July. I think we should deal with the information about the energy transition in the same way. Citizens have electric bikes, scooters, store energy themselves, but in the meantime they have no problem with safety. It is high time that we started to worry about this information. There are quite a lot of measures that we can take ourselves to reduce the risks of fire."

Meanwhile, the e-bikes are flying like hot cakes over the counter, but who should inform the cyclist about safety? The insurer? The fire brigade? The bike shop? You?

"Funnily enough, together with the fire brigade, we have made ten tips for charging at home. One of the tips is: charge when you are there yourself. I also have an e-bike and always take the battery out of my bike. I charge it inside, while I read the newspaper or watch television, so that I can pay attention to it with an oblique eye and at least be there. But that aside. I think this is a great task for the bicycle salesman. He sells a nice (expensive) bike and may tell something about safety. I sometimes wonder if bicycle dealers themselves are aware of the dangers, but so many are now burning off that that safety aspect will slowly but surely penetrate."

Talk about that realization. Insurers sometimes say that a disaster must first happen before anything changes. Does this also apply to the energy transition?

"I hope not, but I understand what you mean. The mechanism often works like this. The energy transition is under development and that often takes place via trial by error. About three or four years ago I was in the news because of an increase in fires with solar panels. These fires have continued to increase and eventually insurers and the industry started talking to each other to come to a kind of standard, so that the building remains insurable when panels are installed on the roof. Nice, but that only happened after it may have gone wrong far too often."

Did those talks also get going because the government is failing to do so?

"Only when the risk of buildings threatened to become uninsurable, did the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Take the initiative to sit down with the two parties. So do they leave it? A bit, but on the other hand, I also think it is appropriate for our country that our government does not immediately come up with very strict regulations and leaves it to the industry first."

In the meantime, insurers are worried about many more risks that the energy transition entails and are calling for more regulation. Rightly?

"They are certainly rightly worried. If the risks remain under the radar, insurers can't do anything with it. They, like us, have no view of that home tinkerer at three high behind. So yes, then I understand that they want more regulation. On the other hand, there are developments going on that we do have insight into. Just think of the large-scale installation of PV panels, the development of neighbourhood batteries and the pilots around hydrogen. Insurers understand risks, know how it works, which mechanisms to use and which barriers you can build in. In addition, they have figures and hard data. For example, when it comes to fires with e-bikes. They know where and how often it burns, what the cause is, and how high the damage is, but when we ask for data, it is difficult. In connection with privacy or trade secrets. And I do understand that these figures do not have to be on the internet, but the data access can be better. What is the development that can be deduced from the figures? For what reasons? Is it increasing? The entire energy transition is sometimes difficult. Developments are moving at lightning speed. What you know today may be different tomorrow. Figures then give just a little more insight."

In addition to figures, insurers also know about risks and you also know about safety. What is the best way to bundle that?

"We already make contact through webinars, meetings, conferences, etc. In addition, insurers and the fire brigade have written a paper together about cooperation, but I would like to go one step further. A declaration of intent is nice, it has to be, but giving each other a look behind the scenes and really, concretely working together, I would find very useful."

What does such a look in the kitchen look like?

"I would start by choosing a topic together. What's coming our way in the coming years? What is really a hot topic? Suppose we were to opt for solar panels, what are we talking about? Is it really such an important issue in the Netherlands? How often does it burn and where? What causes? What's the use of data for you? What do we have? And what can we conclude from this? Can someone from the IFV come along with an inspector of an insurer to see how he / she carries out such an inspection? And conversely, can someone from an insurer take a few days to see how we come to an analysis? On the basis of the data, the inspection and the analysis, perhaps we can give it more publicity? A press release, an enlightening article on the website, perhaps a leaflet with instructions for (home) installers?"

You literally want to join forces?

"Indeed. I'm always very fond of formalizing a collaboration at a strategic level, but then you really give shape to it at the executive level."

(Text: Miranda de Groene - Drawing: Marco van Leeuwen - Bananagun)