The project started with the opportunity to realise a 'social saving'. By preventing the replacement of the natural gas network planned for 2030 - by making homes in the neighbourhood gas-free - the money saved could be used to make it financially attractive for residents to prepare their homes for the future. Due to problems with possible pile rot in the foundations, no work had been done on the rental homes for years, and the homeowners had been living in uncertainty. Recent research had shown that work could be done without damaging the foundations. Now the time had come to bring something positive to the residents; more cost-effective to natural gas-free. The project ran from 2016 to 2019.

The professional parties had a joint intention to become more 'sustainable'. The housing corporation wanted to make its homes 'zero-on-the-Meter', the municipality wanted to be climate-neutral by 2030 and grid manager Stedin wanted to gain experience in ending the use of natural gas for heating homes. Feasibility, financial and technical analyses were approached from the energy field. The motivation was: how do you ensure that homes will no longer use natural gas? How do we ensure that these residents will not be inconvenienced? It was also directly approached as a learning process. Administratively, everything was well explored. Right from the start, the experiences of the residents were taken into account. We considered questions such as: how should we inform residents? And when should we involve them? Communication started early; less than a year after the first consultations, the neighbourhood was informed about the plans and a sounding board group was formed. However, many questions remained unanswered: What will it cost? What alternatives are there? Why is our neighbourhood the first to go? The main motive of the professional parties - to prevent the replacement of the gas grid - resulted in a rather technocratic language in the expressions. The project was about 'saving CO2', preventing the replacement of 'brittle pipes', becoming 'gas-free'. Despite the fact that the communication messages were worded in the most accessible way, these words and this objective only appeal to a very limited number of residents. This type of process also involves the so-called participation paradox: when the main outlines are being determined and the most impactful decisions are being made, the information is still so technical that it is not yet an appealing subject for the residents. It is only when the information becomes more concrete and it becomes clear what it will mean for their own homes that most residents are interested in participating in the decision-making process. By then, however, freedom of movement is already very limited.

Through the motivated start of the professional parties, it became increasingly clear to them that it was a very complex consideration to determine what would be 'the best' alternative to natural gas. For whom 'the best'? How do you weigh sustainability gains against costs and inconvenience? Much was still unclear, but it was clear how relative the financial yield of this project would be. The savings would be dwarfed by the investment required for the alternative. Both in terms of infrastructure (costs that would be borne by the professional parties) and in terms of housing. In addition, the savings could not be monetised in this project due to national rules. Residents' resistance arose in the early stages. They did not experience this project as something positive, but as a new problem that was being imposed on them. Whereas the professional parties saw an opportunity to make something better that would irrevocably affect the residents, the residents got the feeling that they were being presented with 'a problem' of which they were not yet aware. The protest group that had previously made itself heard about the foundation problems, now focused on the gas-free project. They soon formed the articulate core of the sounding board group. New interested parties were sometimes put off by the tone of the discussions in the sounding board group. Only those residents who were interested because of their (former) profession joined. Resistance among residents outside the focus group was reinforced by the fact that they did not receive clear answers to all their questions. Think of questions such as 'can't hydrogen get through the gas pipes? The subject of gas-free was still so new that no decisions had yet been taken at national level either. The expectation is that hydrogen, if it becomes available in the future, will probably be reserved for industry. But if no decisions have been made at national level, the municipality must decide whether to move with the wishes of the residents or to anticipate choices that national politicians are likely to make. This political dimension is complex and not easy to explain. Moreover, the wish to start making the area gas-free did not come from the residents. They were willing to wait until more was known about alternatives that would cost them less to adapt their homes, but then the momentum for the professional parties would have passed.