Ambitious decarbonisation targets that have been set by both the Dutch Government and corporations alike can be achieved. However, this requires the current approach of fulfilling the energy supply and demand to be drastically changed over the next decade. Failure to do so will result in a prolonged energy transition which ultimately results in the failure of realising decarbonisation targets by 2030. This is particularly important because the development of alternative energy sources that is partly necessary for the realisation of the energy transition, tend to have long lead times and are not straightforward to implement.

Transition management in general, and Strategic Niche Management literature specifically are in line with the developments and changes that are currently observed in the energy transition. Nevertheless, a major challenge lies ahead of us in order to empirically validate the partly descriptive and partly prescriptive components of transition management literature. Therefore, the objective of this research can be described as: elaborate, generalize and verify the barriers that lead to procrastination during the pilot- and scale-up phases of green hydrogen pilots. Additionally capture the influence of SNM on these barriers in order to realise energy transition ambitions.

A single case-study – concerning the green hydrogen case in the Netherlands – was adopted to study the state of green hydrogen technology and the potential of SNM literature to aid the development of pilots and their scale-up.

The study showed that a multitude of barriers lead to procrastination of pilot- and scale-up developments with regard to green hydrogen technology. The top five consists of Legislation and regulations, directionality failures, corporate internal factors, lack of subsidy and lack of market demand and supply. Most of the failure mechanisms that were mentioned by respondents are validated and described in SNM literature. However, the theory falls short in naming corporate internal factors as an important reason for impeding the development of the green hydrogen technology.

Furthermore, no distinction is made between the investment decision framework for the scalability of green hydrogen technology and regular investment decisions. The scale-up phase however poses many uncertainties and therefore most definitely results in negative business cases when assessed with regular investment decision frameworks. SNM literature does not provide solutions for this problem and needs to be updated accordingly. SNM theory is however a descriptive theory, rather than prescriptive, however, the energy transition requires literature to aid practitioners with practical guidelines.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is scheduled to present their solution for a storm surge barrier on Galveston Island in 2021 to congress for approval. A solution for an engineered dune system on the Galveston Island West End has been proposed, but storm surge models have shown that protection from this engineered dune only goes so far, moreover the search for a proper alternative that fulfills technical requirements and social political influences have proven to be challenging. This study aimsto assess different dune alternatives, proposed in different reports, with a range of multi disciplinary criteria. The assessment of dune alternatives will also result in guidelines that should be considered for design, maintenance and governance aspects for an engineered dune barrier on Galveston Island, TX. Using a multi disciplinary approach for the evaluation of the different dune alternatives, the following research question was formulated: To what extent do the various dune alternatives fit the requirements for a land barrier at the West End of Galveston Island, looking at both technical and sociopolitical aspects? In this context, technical requirements are defined as the storm surge-and rainfall coping capacities of the dune, i.e. against what kind of storm is the dune resistant. Social political influences are a combination of the perception by local residents that are directly influenced by the construction of a dune system, governmental forms of collaboration, and in provide an analysis of the maintainability of the dune alternatives using the storm surge capacities. The different dune alternatives that have been assessed consist of the dune system proposed by the USACE and GLO (2018), the big dune system proposed by Galvez (2019) and the hybrid dune system as proposed by Muller (2017) and will hereafter be called alternative 1, 2 and 3 respectively. In this report a fourth alternative was introduced which is based on the hybrid dune system by Muller (2017) and consists of a clay core instead of a concrete core. Alternative 4 was chosen in order to simulate the difference between a concrete core and a clay core. Based on XBeach calculations, the storm surge coping capability of each dune was determined by projecting 10 year-, 50 year- and 100 year storms onto the dune alternatives. ArcGIS maps from the Galveston Island allowed for projection of flow patterns on the island in order to determine the rainfall coping capacity. An evaluation of sociopolitical aspects was based on a review of the literature on dune systems, forms of collaboration between governmental and private entities, and interviews with various respondents consisting of private individuals and companies, as well as governmental agencies involved in the process. Analysis of the various dune alternatives, based on multi disciplinary criteria, demonstrated that alternative 1 is completely flattened in 50 year storm events, whereas alternatives 2, 3 and 4 show a good storm surge capacity. All alternatives aggravate the current rainfall capacity at Galveston Island West End, because each dune system poses an obstruction that is not there currently. Alternatives 2 through 4 show a good enough storm resilience, requiring post-storm recovery maintenance while still providing a reduced but fair storm surge capacity. The sociopolitical results indicate that Galveston Island West End residents wishes are only safeguarded for alternative 1. On this basis, the main recommendations are to perform tests upon the dune system alternatives regarding storm events occurring in succession, which is not unusual in the Gulf of Mexico. A combination of alongshore erosion rates from the Galveston Island and the effect of dune vegetation should be determined for the dune alternatives, since these aspects were not considered in this research. Further research is needed to identify the combined effects of rainfall and storm surge in order to get insights into the performances of a certain alternatives. Furthermore, the exact role including the desired storm surge capability should be well defined in order to determine which stakeholder wishes and influences are to be fully considered for the dune system design.