Dutch green activist Marjan Minnesma turns tidal ambassador

Tocardo Tidal Power has taken up a mission to raise awareness about the worldwide potential of tidal energy with the help of Marjan Minnesma – director of the foundation that pushed the Netherlands to instate a policy to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Marjan Minnesma (Photo: Tocardo Tidal Power)

Namely, Minnesma has become Tocardo Tidal Power’s ambassador whose goal will be to change the still ‘relatively unknown’ profile of tidal power as a clean energy source with significant advantages and available global capacity, according to the Dutch clean energy company.

Minnesma is a Dutch environmental activist and director of the Urgenda Foundation, a citizens’ platform that won the case against the Netherlands in 2015 to increase the action for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the country by 2020.

As a result of the Urgenda Foundation’s lawsuit, the Dutch court ordered the government to make sure that the greenhouse gas reduction of 25% must be achieved by 2020, as opposed to the 17% predicted at the time which was deemed as below the norm for developed countries.

Tocardo’s 1.2MW tidal energy array at Eastern Scheldt barrier int the Dutch province of Zeeland (Photo: Tocardo Tidal Power)

 
Trained as a business economist, lawyer and philosopher, Minnesma developed into one of the figureheads of the pursuit of an energy transition in the Netherlands in the first decades of the 21st century.

Over the years, Minnesma worked with, among others, Greenpeace, Novem, the Institute for Environmental Issues in Amsterdam, and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Minnesma’s work is set to promote tidal energy as the extra form of clean energy from water that is also a very necessary addition if the Netherlands want to achieve its climate objectives, said the Noord-Holland front-runner for the innovative and readily available tidal energy technology – Tocardo Tidal Power.