In 2024, 54 percent of all electricity generated in the Netherlands came from renewable sources. That writes the National Climate Platform (NKP) on Monday.
It is the first time that more than half of the annual electricity is renewable. By 2023, exactly 50 percent of all electricity generated would come from green sources. Of all the months, April took the cake this year: 68 percent of all electricity was generated greenly that month.
The NKP bases its figures on data from the National Energy Dashboard (NED). The platform defines “green” energy as “energy from natural sources that are constantly replenished”. For example, biomass is also included, but nuclear energy is not. After all, the nuclear fuel required for nuclear energy is not renewable.
Sun and wind grow fast
The share of wind and solar energy in particular grew rapidly this year. At the end of 2023, two large wind farms in the North Sea – Hollandse Kust Noord and Zuid – supplied power to the grid for the first time. This year, more solar panels were also steadily installed on Dutch roofs.
The result: in 2024, the Netherlands supplied 14 percent more wind energy than in 2023, and 15 percent more solar power. In total, 11 percent more green energy was generated this year than last year.
Growth could have been even slightly higher, writes the NKP. Not only did the wind turbines and solar panels provide more power, they were also turned off more and more often. This happens when there is so much sun and wind that supply exceeds demand. It then becomes unprofitable for producers to run their installations. Sometimes they cannot get rid of their electricity because the grid is full.
More than 3 terawatt hours were lost
The NKP estimates that a total of more than 3 terawatt hours of electricity will have been lost in 2024 due to installations being switched off, three times as much as in 2023. If the Netherlands had had more options for storing energy, for example in batteries or hydrogen, the share of green energy would have increased. in the energy mix could therefore be 2.5 percentage points higher, according to the NKP.
Research agency Entrance, which collaborates with the NKP, calculated that a hydrogen electrolyser could have produced 60 million kilograms of green hydrogen with those 3 terawatt hours of unused electricity.
According to the NKP, this could have replaced almost 250 million cubic meters of natural gas. “The Netherlands has actually let clean energy run away in order to meet demand later with fossil energy,” the platform writes.
Also read
The growth of renewable energy sources continues to accelerate, but is it enough?