Empowering Energy Transition!
The energy sector holds a fundamental role in shaping the trajectory of modern societies. As global demand for sustainable practices intensifies, the industry has transitioned from traditional models to focus on innovation and environmental accountability. Consumers can sit in the driver’s seat of the energy transition, where they make conscious choices on their desired energy sources. To ensure reliable green energy consumption claims, energy origin tracking has emerged as a critical area, ensuring transparency and trust in renewable energy systems. This approach addresses challenges in regulatory compliance, market efficiency, and environmental sustainability by enabling consumers and businesses to trace their energy sources. The sector continues to explore creative solutions to integrate renewable energy sources, cultivate flexibility in energy sourcing, and support interconnections among energy carriers to meet growing demands. As hydrogen is generally derived from other energy carriers, it needs integration of tracking frameworks for electricity, gases and hydrogen in legal frameworks, yet also across jurisdictions in continental and global standards.
Katrien Verwimp, the Managing Founder of Enunda, has distinguished herself as a visionary leader in the sector of renewable energy tracking. With a strong focus on system-oriented approaches, she has continuously redefined the possibilities within energy origin tracking. Katrien’s leadership is grounded in collaboration, strategic insight, and a deep respect for human potential. She demonstrates aligning professional roles with intrinsic drivers to unlock individual and collective capacities. Through her innovative strategies and ability to guide diverse teams, she has shaped frameworks that ensure impactful energy-tracking systems.
Enunda stands as a center of expertise in energy origin tracking. The company specializes in facilitating systems integral to the energy transition, focusing on delivering value in a niche yet critical domain, working with governments, standard setters, certifiers and other system facilitators worldwide. By adapting to regulatory and market developments while maintaining a resilient internal structure, Enunda addresses the intricate demands of the energy sector. Its commitment to education, quality assurance, and system design positions it as a trusted partner in building reliable and transparent energy-tracking frameworks, further enhancing the global shift toward sustainability.
Let’s explore Katrien’s expertise in steering the energy transition:
Key projects
Katrien’s most known work is her work as strategy coordinator of the European non-profit Association of Issuing Bodies, where she helps the 38 European national governmentally appointed issuers of guarantees of origin for electricity, gas and hydrogen to standardize and future-proof the guarantees of origin, which allows efficient cross-border operation. She was a lead expert in drafting the CEN EN16325 extension to multiple energy carriers. In EnergyTag, she helped draft a standard for sub-hourly electricity certificates that matches carbon-free electricity production and consumption hourly. She leads the auditor’s teams in both AIB and EnergyTag.
Enunda recently helped draft legislation for guarantees of origin for gases in Georgia, and it earlier made a gap analysis with European systems for Turkish and Taiwanese governmental guarantees of origin frameworks. Enunda provides in-house masterclasses on the landscape of energy tracking, which is often demanded with a focus on hydrogen certification. Enunda has been a project leader in service contracts with the European Commission in tracking system standardization, enhancing efficiency, and disclosing the origin of energy sources. Currently partnering with German research institutions for a project for the German environmental agency to investigate frameworks and options to enhance the impact of energy source disclosure.
Internal Motivation and Energy Origin Tracking
Katrien thrives on internal motivation and drivers to conceive and work on energy origin tracking frameworks and to develop new bedding and thought lines in the sector.
Yet she took the opportunity to embrace some milestones that organically showed up on her path. Choosing her master’s thesis on hydrogen and fuel cells in 2000 probably illustrates her favor for system-transformational matters. Her work at the energy regulatory authority in Belgium-Flanders enabled her to work on renewable energy (RE) supporting market mechanisms in 2002.
It was in the sector-transformation phase of the liberalization of the energy sector in Europe, and for Belgium, it was also still early days for renewable energy. She had the opportunity to learn and grow with the growing renewable energy sector. She enjoyed personal contact with each of the first tens of renewable energy producers in Flanders—by now, there are way too many to know them all individually.
The responsibility of developing basic requirements for renewable energy production support system eligibility allowed many onsite visits and personal relationships with many in the sector, growing understanding of many different perspectives of an issue. That enabled developing pragmatic views, for example, when developing inspection and supervision procedures and drafting proposals for legislation.
She lived her passion for continuous refining of the system for energy tracking at the regional level in Flanders, and she had the opportunity to lead a project at the European level on enhanced standardization of guarantees of origin. Back then, practical organizational reasons required the founding of a company to take on the project lead as a contractor of the Association of Issuing Bodies (AIB), which the European Commission contracted.
Much of her work since then has been related to enhancing the European Energy Certificate System. The members of this association, who are governmentally appointed in their country to manage the national guarantee of origin system, jointly harmonize these instruments in the AIB.
Ever since, projects related to ensuring reliable and impactful tracking of the origin of electricity, gas, and hydrogen have come on her path. She still enjoys a core role in AIB as strategy coordinator of the European energy certificate system while working increasingly with other stakeholders to enhance reliable and impactful energy origin tracking frameworks.
Katrien acknowledges that her key milestones have been internal ones. Developing herself as a systemic coach from 2005 to 2018, parallel to her work with the regulator, helped her gain an understanding of general human functioning and how to better leverage humans’ potential.
Often in life, underlying dynamics, under the surface, hold the power to bring either roadblocks or success. This is true for individual personal development, equally valid for cooperation at the workplace, and even more relevant for inter-organizational co-creation. People work with people. A deep respect for an individual’s personal growth path gives room for successful interactions when it comes to cooperating between people in organizational system design.
She had a personal development coaching practice for several years, working with groups and individuals on family constellations and other techniques that unleashed people’s deeper potential. She loves humans’ creative energy and enjoys feeding them. However, people live in society, and to unleash part of human potential, it takes addressing keys in societal systems that can trigger potential evolutions.
She still gets engaging shivers when being with a person unleashing their hidden potential, and she loves people’s conception energy. She feels an urge to co-create better systems with the energy that unleashed their generative energy. This eventually led to orienting more time to co-creation work in the energy sector.
Shaping Unique Roles in New Developments
Katrien has not yet done a job that existed before she did it. This gave her some liberty to shape some essential focus areas. Organically, she has often been asked to think about new developments. Throughout the years it became clear that she enjoyed strategizing. However, luckily, people are not all the same. It is most rewarding to be in a role that allows coinciding with an expression of one’s internal drivers. Acknowledging the differences between what activates different people and casting roles accordingly leads to joyful cooperation.
Expertise in Energy Origin Tracking
As the Managing Founder of Enunda, Katrien’s primary responsibilities and focus areas are delivering on the value propositions that contribute to the energy transition. As a center of expertise in energy origin tracking system facilitation, Enunda operates in a niche area that is central to the energy transition.
The focus areas extend and adapt to external contexts, including regulatory and market developments. The internal focus is on maintaining a strong basis to interact agilely with this constantly changing external environment. She leads cross-organizational teams to achieve successful project outcomes by aligning all to the joint objectives while giving floor to the internal drivers of the contributors.
Flexibility in Energy Sourcing
Katrien believes flexibility in energy sourcing is key to the energy transition. Weather-dependent renewable energy sources need steerability toward demand on the energy consumption side. Interactions between end-use sectors of the different energy carriers can deliver on that flexibility. Conversions of energy carriers allow energy storage and change the energy carrier at end-use.
Growth in the Renewable Energy Sector
She highlights that the renewable energy sector is growing, and there is a lot of daily news. Still, part of it is relatively noisy and not essential for understanding the industry’s evolutions. Where it is challenging to be aware of every development before it comes out, it is helpful to connect with the general dynamics in the sector and acknowledge the underlying intentions. Katrien enjoys being vastly interconnected with stakeholders around the globe. The key is to provide value in every contact, which often leads to value flow back to you.
Managing Energy in Professional and Private Life
In Katrien’s view, to balance professional commitments with personal life and maintain a healthy work-life balance, one must ensure that professional roles fit the individual. People can lose a lot of energy by assuming roles and responsibilities at work that don’t enable expression of themselves, which then seeks compensation in their personal lives. This can drain a lot of energy. Identifying mindfully what gives and doesn’t give energy is essential in professional and private life.
Work-life balance can have different forms for different people and stages of life. Katrien highly enjoys having flexibility in working time and place.
Again, here, the key is the content of the work and the type of role to take up. Being able to work constructively “with” one’s energy rather than operating in structures that would work “against” it is essential to be free from work frustrations that shouldn’t drag on in private life.
Advice for Aspiring Leaders
Katrien advises aspiring leaders in renewable energy regulation to be authentic: Do your soul-searching. Find your intrinsic drivers, clean them from potential frustrations, and clarify your mission. Allow others to be inspired and to be on board with their drivers.
Goals in Energy Origin Tracking
Enunda’s general goals are education, quality assurance, and system design of impactful energy-origin tracking systems that enhance the energy transition. Enunda interacts with ongoing developments while refining its offers.
Enhancing Trust in Energy Tracking
Enunda’s action area, energy tracking between source and consumer, has become one of the central pillars of the energy transition. It is observed that people in system design often lack knowledge and/or trust in the environment. This is where Enunda brings its value with education, quality assurance, and support in system design for energy origin tracking frameworks.
Reflecting on Progress and Collective Impact
Katrien highlights that the holiday season is an excellent time to reflect on the progress made together and the collective impact of Enunda’s efforts. At Enunda, the global network of partners, clients, and colleagues who work tirelessly to advance reliable energy origin tracking systems is a source of inspiration. Their dedication has empowered consumers and driven the energy transition forward.
Katrien shares heartfelt wishes: “From all of us at Enunda, we wish you a joyous and restful holiday season filled with warmth and inspiration. May the new year bring you renewed energy and continued success in all your endeavors.”
