It is not going too fast, but too slow: the energy transition could have yielded much more for households and companies, writes Hans Nijenhuis in this commentary.
Have they gone mad? The cabinet will oblige us to install a hybrid heat pump next to the central heating boiler from 2026, while the waiting time for these things has now been one and a half years. The European Commission wants solar panels on all public roofs from 2025, and also on all new homes from 2029. While the electricity grid in the Netherlands cannot always cope with it. On the other hand, science has been warning for years that the climate will change irreversibly if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced quickly. Hot summers, drought, then flooding; we notice it ourselves. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and high energy prices underline that dependence on oil and gas also has other drawbacks. Freak? They have woken up.
But does it all have to be that fast? The sobering answer is: if only it had started sooner. Then more Dutch households would have had a lower energy bill and more Dutch companies would have been able to earn from the energy transition. It was not Holland as a mill country that started with windmills at sea, but Denmark. The Danish energy company Ørsted, which decided to stop using coal in 2008, is now the worldwide market leader with offshore wind energy and earns gold with it. In solar panels, China took a lead with mass production. 80 percent of Dutch solar panels now come from there. We’re late, but not too late. Because the government now imposes standards and announces them well in advance, producers know where they stand and can start inventing and investing.
And what about that overloaded power grid? The labor shortage? The people who can’t afford it? All serious problems. But also problems associated with a transition: don’t focus on them blindly. You may know the story of Kodak. When the first digital camera came on the market in 1981, this major manufacturer of film films mainly saw its shortcomings. When they were solved one by one, Kodak responded by… making better rolls of film. In 2006, the CEO said that digital photography would not really go that fast. In 2012, the company went bankrupt. Let’s not become Kodak. There is still a world to win.
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