Does electric driving help farmers? Four questions about the relationship between climate and nitrogen

These are the calculations that many farmers and politicians have been waiting for. According to calculations that have not yet been published by the Ministry of Finance, nitrogen emissions will have to fall less quickly if the Netherlands achieves its climate targets by 2030. NRC got insight into the calculations last week.

After the reports, MPs denounced the cabinet’s nitrogen plans, which would be “the consequences of a super quicker”. Haast work, therefore, a missed opportunity and bad for confidence in politics, it sounded in The Hague.

According to them, the cabinet should have taken better account of the climate plans when formulating nitrogen policy. Then it got quiet.

Four questions about the nitrogen and climate targets in the Netherlands and the agricultural sector.

1 What do nitrogen and climate policy have in common?

Little at first glance. The emissions, or rather the precipitation of nitrogen must be reduced quickly because nitrogen compounds seriously affect nature. This applies, for example, to ammonia from agriculture when faeces and pee mix, but also to nitrogen oxide from traffic. But these are not compounds with greenhouse gases such as CO₂ and methane which are responsible for global warming.

Yet it is logical that the approach to the climate problem is associated with the nitrogen approach. Measures that are good for the climate often also reduce nitrogen emissions. It is not without reason that cars are only allowed to drive 100 kilometers per hour on the highways between 06:00 and 19:00, instead of 130. This reduces CO emissions₂ and nitrous oxide. Restricting the livestock also has a double effect: less nitrogen and less methane.

2What is the current state of climate policy?

The Netherlands wants to reduce its CO . emissions by 2030₂ and similar greenhouse gases by 60 percent compared to 1990. A lot still needs to be done, because up to last year, the Netherlands had only achieved a reduction of almost 24 percent. The 2019 climate agreement was based on a 49 percent reduction, but last year the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency concluded that not enough was being done to achieve that goal.

Now the bar is even higher. Europe is aiming for an emission reduction of 55 percent and to ‘certainly’ achieve that climate target, the current government has raised the target to 60 percent. With Rob Jetten (D66), the Netherlands has been given a climate minister for the first time and through him, the central government is emphatically taking the lead for the first time. Ministers who deal with traffic, housing and industry must account to Jetten about the progress made in the field of climate change.

In the first six months of this cabinet, the necessary measures have already been taken. To illustrate: the end of the central heating boiler is coming, new lease cars must be electric from 2025 and a national pipeline network for sustainable hydrogen is being worked on. The bad news is that the war in Ukraine has caused an energy crisis, which threatens to put the climate on the back burner. For example, coal-fired power stations are allowed to run at full capacity again, while they had previously been subject to a production restriction.

3If we start driving electrically en masse, will that give farmers more nitrogen space?

Agriculture, industry and traffic are responsible for the excess nitrogen in the Netherlands. In addition, nitrogen is also blown over from neighboring countries.

There are roughly two ways to achieve the necessary reduction of that surplus of nitrogen. One option is to oblige each ‘sector’ to end its own surplus. Then improvements in traffic will not help agriculture and the bar for agriculture will not be lowered. The second possibility is always to look at the total surplus that needs to be reduced. In that case, it could help agriculture if, for example, traffic and industry become greener quickly.

RIVM maps out the surpluses and, when asked, confirms that ‘new climate measures can also have a nitrogen-reducing effect’. With a strict climate policy, fewer other measures need to be taken to conserve nature. In doing so, the National Institute does not start from the intentions that have been made in the area of ​​climate change, but calculates based on what has actually been achieved in terms of policy. So new windmills really have to run, companies must actually have reduced their emissions.

Does this also mean that one sector can help another to solve its nitrogen problem or is, for example, agriculture responsible for its own surplus? That is, says the RIVM, a political choice that still has to be made.

4And what about making agriculture itself more sustainable?

Pieter Boot, until recently a climate specialist at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, recently took a hard line about sustainability by farmers. “I don’t see any concrete plans at all in the agricultural sector,” said Boot, who calculated the national climate plans at PBL until his retirement.

Within the climate agreement, agriculture with traffic is one of the laggards. A year ago, Pieter van Geel, chairman of the agricultural consultation within the climate agreement, predicted that it would be “very difficult” to achieve the climate targets for the sector for 2030. Financially compensating for a coal-fired power plant to close is simply easier than convincing tens of thousands of farmers to switch operations, he said. in a conversation with Ed Nijpelswhich monitors the progress of the climate agreement.

The fact that Van Geel was already not very optimistic about the goals of 2030 in 2021 is telling. Circumstances have now deteriorated: the nitrogen problems and the farmers’ resistance are effectively putting the climate talks on hold. While energetic climate policy would solve at least 80 percent of the nitrogen problems, according to experts.