Directly below the Gasunie advertisement on page 11 is a stark contrast in energy philosophy: an ad for EnergieRemmers, a local specialist in solar panels. This placement perfectly captures the energy tug-of-war happening in the northern Netherlands during the 2012-13 season. While the old guard defended fossil fuels, the new wave of renewable energy was aggressively targeting the grassroots level.
The marketing strategy used by EnergieRemmers is brilliant in its local focus. The headline reads: “Solar panels with a collective discount for supporters of FC Groningen.” In 2013, solar panels were still a relatively significant financial investment for a standard household, and the market was full of skepticism. To overcome this, local installers leveraged the deep community trust associated with the football club. By offering a “collective discount” specifically to fans, they turned a daunting technological upgrade into a communal, tribal activity. The slogan “Scoren doe je bij EnergieRemmers” (You score at EnergieRemmers) neatly tied the pitch to the matchday experience.
This advertisement marks the early stages of what would become a massive visual transformation of the Dutch landscape. The ad features photos of standard Dutch terraced houses with shiny new panels on their roofs—a sight that was becoming increasingly common but was not yet the absolute norm it is today.
A Look into the Future
By 2026, the campaign launched by companies like EnergieRemmers has been overwhelmingly successful—perhaps too successful. The Netherlands now boasts one of the highest densities of solar panels per capita in the world. The “collective discounts” of 2013 helped kickstart a revolution that eventually led to modern challenges, such as the Dutch electrical grid becoming severely overloaded on sunny days. The transition from the gas-powered narrative at the top of the page to the solar-powered reality at the bottom perfectly summarizes the environmental evolution of the Groningen region over the last decade.