The Netherlands has established a cooperative decision-making process (called “Polderen”, from “inpolderen” for “land reclamation”, based on collective consensus being required to build dikes), which has become quite embedded into Dutch culture, and is applied to policy-making, including for making their Climate Agreement more accountable. As part of this, the national government created a new operational division to allow municipalities to cooperate better with each other on mutually-acceptable sustainable energy ambitions. While the country’s governance outlines twelve provinces, these thirty new regions have been created for the purpose of allowing municipalities to better plan joint projects across traditional administrative boundaries. Not only does their mutual consent expedite project timelines, they also benefit from saving on costs otherwise duplicated by separate projects, can combine their staff capacities and/or even merge locations for more cohesive project sites. To ensure full accountability, each of the thirty regions has a board of experts representing their respective municipalities, and whose role is to formulate proposals that will have to be approved by each local administration. The idea is that nationally-set goals are not only implemented at a local level via an accountable process, but that local priorities can be collectively defined so as to even work their upwards to better inform national processes as well.