Nitrogen and the overcrowded power grid undermine the ambitions of provinces and municipalities to build more than 936,000 homes by 2030. Before that warn the provinces, united in the Interprovincial Consultation (IPO), on Thursday.
In 2022, provinces will sign 35 regional ‘housing deals’ with the government, intended to address the housing shortage. It is now unclear whether approximately 500,000 of these planned homes can be built at all.
The available nitrogen space is by far the biggest obstacle to the construction plans. The closer plots are to Natura 2000 areas and the greater the number of homes, the smaller the chance that a permit will be issued. This is stated by the provinces, who speak of a “worrisome situation”. Half of all homes that provinces want to build are located within five kilometers of nitrogen-sensitive nature. Granting permits will then be ‘limited or no longer possible’.
A second bottleneck cited by the IPO is the overcrowded power grid. It “appears to be difficult to get a good grip on this problem,” the provinces write. Utrecht, Flevoland and Gelderland suffer most from grid congestion. “In those provinces it is quite possible that a large part of the homes can no longer be built from 2027.”
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When signing the housing deals in 2022, the question was already: how feasible are these ambitions?
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