The province of Drenthe is making one million euros available to insulate 400 homes. That is 2,500 euros per home. The Drenthe politically agreed with this.
The money is intended to help low-income homeowners. They often do not have the financial means to make their home more sustainable. With the rising gas price, they also lose extra money, because they often live in poorly insulated homes. The province warns that more and more home owners are having trouble paying their energy bills if these homes are not made more sustainable.
That is why the province is introducing a new subsidy. Homeowners can use this to apply cavity wall and floor insulation. They can apply for a maximum of 2,500 euros. This concerns people with an income of up to 130 percent of the social minimum. This would include a total of 2,900 households. However, in order to be able to help all these homeowners, 7.25 million euros are needed.
Of those 2,900 households, 1,600 live in Regio Deal municipalities, which are municipalities that fall under a collaboration between the central government and the region. The province expects that these people can be helped through the Region Deal. That leaves 1,300 households.
And that is more than the 400 households that can be helped with that million euros. That is why six parties have come up with a proposal to make not 1 million, but 3.25 million available for this subsidy. With that amount all 1,300 households can be helped.
JA21 comes with very different amounts. The party says that the 2,500 euros that the province considers necessary to make each house more sustainable is far too low. “If you talk about the very-very-cheapest material for insulation, you come to 4,500 euros,” says Thomas Blinde on behalf of JA21. “Then you haven’t brought the contractors with you yet.”
Provincial administrator Tjisse Stelpstra firmly dismisses this criticism. He describes the “juggling” with numbers as a “fake news discussion”. Ewoud Bos (GroenLinks) even thinks that the 2,500 euros is rather on the high side. He himself requested a quote for floor insulation for a house from the mid-thirties, with a side wall. “1400 euros,” he says.
Nevertheless, a majority of the States ultimately believes that the amount does not need to be increased. This is partly due to a commitment from Stelpstra. He says he will come back to the groups if it turns out that the million euros is not enough.
Stelpstra does not expect situations in Groningen, which some factions are afraid of. With these Groningen situations they mean in the long line of people from Groningen who wanted to claim compensation for earthquake damage. Many people queued for nothing, because the subsidy money soon ran out.
“It is a difficult target group to reach,” says Stelpstra, who therefore does not expect a massive claim to this subsidy. “I think it will be difficult to find these 400 people, although I hope I will come back to that. And we can help the entire target group.”
Among tenants, an additional 29,500 households would be eligible. However, they are dependent on the landlord for insulation measures. That is why, together with housing associations, it is being investigated what the possibilities are to insulate their home ownership more quickly.