Energy Is No Longer a Technical Detail. It's the Asset.
On April 14 in Brussels, industry leaders gathered for an curated session hosted by EightySeven to explore a pressing question: as energy systems become more volatile, what does it take to future-proof buildings, portfolios, and cities?
Bringing together the perspectives of five speakers: Tom Defruyt (Eneco Belgium), Khadija Nadi (dnergy®), Pieter Zijlema (Pluq), Joachim Vleminckx (Enersee), and Ian Forsyth (Sustainable Building Solutions), the session offered a multi-layered view of the challenges and opportunities ahead, from today’s market realities to the practical solutions already being implemented on the ground.
Five speakers, one urgent message: the buildings that treat energy as a strategic asset today will be the ones still standing and running tomorrow.
Tom Defruyt · Innovation Manager, Eneco Belgium
Gas prices have nearly doubled since the Iran conflict. The way out is acceleration, not retreat.
Tom Defruyt opened with hard numbers: gas prices are now around €47/MWh roughly double since the start of the Iran conflict and are likely to stay elevated through summer as strategic reserves need refilling. Power prices in Belgium have already felt the impact, with peaks hitting €130/MWh on days when gas plants must compensate for lower wind output.
The silver lining: renewables are systematically pushing gas out of the price-setting role. In Belgium, renewables already account for more than 50% of electricity generation. In the US, they generate more than a third of all electricity for the first time ever. The direction is clear. The pace just needs to increase.
"Closing the nuclear reactors was, in my humble opinion, a historical mistake. Without them, we were almost at 100% carbon-free power already." Tom Defruyt, Eneco Belgium
Khadija Nadi · CEO & Co-founder, dnergy
The debate has moved on. It's no longer "should we?" it's "how do we do it at scale?"
Khadija Nadi runs one of Belgium's leading energy efficiency companies and her message was direct: the industry has crossed a threshold. Nobody needs convincing that energy efficiency matters anymore. The real challenge now is execution getting results consistently, across entire building portfolios, not just in showcase pilots.
"Data alone is not enough. Going on site is important. But how do you scale it? That's where the game is now." Khadija Nadi, dnergy.
She warned against the industry's tendency to treat data as the destination. Buildings are full of sensors and BMS systems generating enormous volumes of data but data only matters if it's actionable at the right level. An asset manager needs portfolio-level payback analysis. A facility manager on site needs to know what to fix today. These are different languages, and bridging them is the hard problem.
Pieter Zijlema · CEO & Co-founder, Pluq
EV charging is not just an amenity. It's a grid event and most buildings aren't ready for it.
Pieter Zijlema started with a map of the Netherlands: almost entirely red, meaning no additional grid capacity available for new connections in most of the country. Six years ago, it was mostly yellow. This, he said, is where Belgium is heading and the window to act is shrinking.
The core issue is math that isn't being done early enough. One hour of EV charging consumes more electricity than the average Belgian household uses in an entire day. Install 70 charging stations on a building, as happened in one Almere office complex, and you're potentially drawing 770 kilowatts more than many buildings' entire grid connection. Add morning startup of heat pumps and HVAC to that picture, and the peak load problem becomes severe.
"The car stands still for 23 hours a day. Why would you charge it in the one specific hour it adds the most stress to the system?" Pieter Zijlema, Pluq.
Joachim Vleminckx · CEO & Co-founder, Enersee
"Meten is weten" is often nonsense. Measuring is only useful if you know what you're optimizing for.
Joachim Vleminckx delivered the evening's most provocative framing. His AI company works with clients managing up to 12,000 buildings across 32 countries generating three trillion data points from 500+ installation types. The problem isn't a lack of data. It's that most of it is generating reports that nobody acts on.
"In Belgium, we spend more time creating the energy report than improving the energy performance." Joachim Vleminckx, Enersee
His framework: start with the KPI you actually want to move. Model what "normal" looks like for each asset. Then use AI not to generate dashboards, but to surface the specific actions a broken relay, an anomalous consumption pattern, a technician dispatch that change the number. The goal is as little reporting as possible. The goal is action.
Ian Forsyth · Director, Sustainable Building Solutions
He was in Iberia when the lights went out for 11 hours. His takeaway: almost no building was actually prepared.
Ian Forsyth was one of 60 million people on the Iberian Peninsula when the grid collapsed. Eleven hours without power. Within two hours, mobile networks failed. Payment terminals went down. Hospitals canceled operations because patient data systems had no backup power. The one functioning asset in a town of 20,000 people: a single supermarket with a generator. The financial cost to Spain and Portugal: estimated between €1.6 and €4.5 billion for 16 hours.
His focus is commercial office buildings and his conclusion was clear: most buildings that think they have backup power actually don't have useful backup power. Emergency generators support elevators and lighting for an hour. UPS systems run for 15 minutes. A 26-year-old generator running on accumulated residue from monthly 5-minute tests will probably fail the moment it's genuinely needed.
"People don't appreciate the value of energy until it's gone. And what is coming is infrastructure attacks, cyberattacks, sabotage. Buildings will go down. The question is which ones stay operational." Ian Forsyth, Sustainable Building Solutions
Key takeaways summary:
Energy is now a balance sheet issue, not a technical one stranded assets are already appearing in transactions today
The question has shifted from "should we act?" to "how do we execute at scale?" data without action is just expensive reporting
EV charging, heat pumps, and grid constraints are converging buildings that don't plan for this now will face costs that can't be retrofitted cheaply
A blackout is no longer a theoretical scenario the Iberian collapse was a rehearsal, and most buildings failed it
The winning building in 5 years isn't just efficient it's a dynamic actor in the energy market, generating income from flexibility, not just reducing costs
📸 𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞
