Expert Talk | Bram De Wispelaere on 2026: why the energy transition will be decided now

Key takeaways

• 2026 is the pivotal year to keep the 2050 goal achievable
  2050 seems a long way off, but investment cycles and R&D lead times mean that decisions for the coming decades must be made now.
• Innovations must be implemented today
  Without acceleration in innovation and upscaling, 2050 will be unachievable; the focus is shifting to what can be rolled out within one to two investment cycles.
• EnergyVille’s leverage: proving what works and quantifying the impact
  The added value lies in the combination of demonstration (labs, living labs, testing grounds) and scenarios that make the effects on the economy, CO2 and industry explicit.
• ‘Show, don’t tell’ makes technology credible for partners and policymakers
  Realistic test environments accelerate trust, adoption and decision-making — and will become a conscious strategic choice towards 2026.
• Collaboration as lever for impact
  To maximise impact, valorisation and collaboration must be organised structurally from the outset (e.g. via flagships) rather than only at the end.

‘For many people, 2050 is a long way off. But if you listen to industry, it’s not far off at all,’ he says. ‘Their investment cycles are five to ten years. In order to invest today, they need to know what the next five to twenty-five years will bring. Otherwise, it’s almost impossible to make a business case in Europe.’

In addition, much of the technology — from electrification to carbon capture — cannot be implemented “overnight”. ‘If R&D is still needed for that, you can easily add another five to ten years. Then twenty-five years is literally today,’ says Bram. His conclusion is sobering: anyone who takes 2050 seriously must see 2026 as a pivotal moment.

Accelerating innovation, because implementation takes time

This time dimension also determines how Bram views EnergyVille’s mission. Not as a place where research only happens “on paper”, but as an environment that helps accelerate the process — from idea to application.

‘Without innovation, you will certainly not make it to 2050,’ he says. ‘Time is really ticking away. Innovation must happen now, otherwise it will not be implemented in industry in time for 2050.’

In concrete terms, this means that by 2026, innovation can no longer be non-committal, but must focus on what can be scaled up within one to two investment cycles. This is also the bridge to what EnergyVille wants to achieve in 2026: not to advance a single sector, but the energy system as a whole.

On the one hand: demonstrating what technology and innovation can achieve.
‘The scientific research we do at EnergyVille is not just for show,’ he says. Yes, it produces papers, patents and substantiated figures. But he emphasises that this alone is not enough: you also have to demonstrate it. And that, according to him, is one of EnergyVille’s strengths: ‘We have laboratories, living labs, testing grounds where you can show what technology can do in practice.’

On the other hand: connecting technology with impact.
‘We can create scenarios, acting as a kind of crystal ball for governments,’ he explains. ‘If we do this, what does that mean for the economy, for CO2 reduction, for industry?’ It is precisely in this translation, from technological innovation to social and economic consequences, that he sees the unique added value of EnergyVille.

‘If we are relevant to policy, then policy will also find us relevant. Demonstrating that policy relevance, through demonstrations and scenarios, will be important in 2026.’

“Show, don’t tell” as a strategy

Bram summarises an important principle as “show, don’t tell”. He makes the link with a personal hobby — writing scripts and drawing comics — to make the point: it is more powerful to make something visible than just to report on it.

‘It’s so much more powerful to just show that it can be done than to write a hundred pages about it,’ he says. ‘That’s why living labs are one of the focus areas for 2026: they are the breeding ground on which we can continue to work and effectively demonstrate what new distribution technology, storage, flexibility, electric vehicles, etc. can achieve in practice.’

In 2026, that “showing” will no longer be a nice-to-have, but a conscious choice: making technology credible by testing it in realistic contexts, together with partners who can put it to use.

Collaboration as a lever for impact

Bram points to an important distinguishing feature of EnergyVille: the broad value chain it covers, from material innovation to system impact.

‘What surprised me is the entire value chain coverage,’ he says. ‘From material to system. That’s unique.’

But he also immediately mentions the area of tension: as soon as valorisation is involved, that collaborative element sometimes disappears. ‘In projects, you feel that synergy between partners. But when it comes to valorisation, we need to strive for even more collaboration between the partner institutions,’ he says. 

He sees a clear task for 2026: not treating valorisation as the “last step”, but including it from the outset — so that the cohesion between partners is not lost when research moves towards application.

Flagships and mission-driven collaboration towards 2026

Bram places the flagships in the same context. Flagships are mission-driven programmes that bring together different research lines around concrete system challenges with strong industrial relevance, such as electrical renovation, modular renewable energy systems or electrified chemical production.

Instead of separate projects, a flagship is a coherent, multi-year programme that combines several EnergyVille research lines into a single integrated approach. EnergyVille takes on the coordinating role and actively involves external partners to accelerate the impact and societal relevance.

With a duration of at least four years, flagships deliberately combine high-risk, high-return research with application-oriented innovation. The aim is to significantly increase the maturity level of technology (TRL), market (MRL) and society (SRL).

Bram therefore explicitly links the flagship story to valorisation and mission-driven innovation, with a clear focus on relevance for Flemish industry.

According to him, it is important that flagships start from the needs of industry: capturing what companies need, understanding where they want to go, and building solutions around this with the expertise available at EnergyVille. He also calls this “the mechanisation of collaboration”: collaborating and making the transition to valorisation structural, so that it becomes part of the process from the outset. 

From collaboration to product: Orion Grid Technologies as an illustration of what “mechanisation” can deliver

As an example of how collaboration can lead to implementation and application, Bram refers to Orion Grid Technologies, a spin-off of VITO, KU Leuven and EnergyVille. He describes Orion as a process that delves into measurement data and asset data from a network operator, where data mining and modelling reveal connections between assets and management.

This results in insights that network operators “have never had before”. For example, based on data, it is possible to deduce whether problems are arising somewhere that could lead to fire.

Misunderstandings that slow things down: energy is more than just climate

Bram sees a risk in the public debate: that energy transition will once again be reduced to “climate policy” and will therefore be viewed as a luxury.

‘Energy transition is sometimes called into question by the threat of war and economic pressure,’ he says. But he believes it is time to turn that narrative around: ‘The energy transition is relevant to all your other problems,’ he argues.

‘We are making the system more reliable and sustainable, and we are trying to move away from fossil fuels — one of Europe’s biggest dependencies.’

In that context, he also discusses nuclear energy. Not as a panacea, but as a technology whose role needs to be clarified, and above all: in what timeframe and under what financial conditions. ‘It’s a technology like any other,’ he says. ‘The question is: how quickly can you implement it? And how much will it cost?’

Obstacles are rarely technological: the preconditions for 2026

According to Bram, the transition is often held back not by the technology itself, but by regulations, permits, timing and organisation. EnergyVille can help by clarifying the impact and timing of technology, so that policymakers can assess the consequences for implementation.

‘You have to be able to explain why legislation needs to change in line with an objective,’ he says. He points to the importance of room for experimentation: deregulated zones that really work. ‘Sometimes licensing procedures simply take too much time. That’s not sustainable if you want to develop quickly.’

Closing remarks

For 2026, Bram wants one thing above all else: the satisfaction of work that has visible impact. ‘The best thing you can experience is creating something and seeing it being used by the people or companies you built it for,’ he says. ‘I sincerely wish that satisfaction for our employees.’