Emulation is often looked upon with skepticism. Although it may be the only way to render complex digital objects in the future without affecting their authenticity and integrity, emulation is considered to be too technically challenging and therefore too expensive and time consuming. This line of thought has thus far prevented emulation from being developed for digital preservation purposes. The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands and the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) believe that a preservation approach based on emulation is worthwhile and that it needs further development and testing in order to establish its true value. This paper presents an overview of emulation as a preservation approach, a conceptual model of modular emulation, experiment results and goals of the emulation project.