News item | 22-12-2023 | 2:43 PM
The government is making €54 million available to support provinces and municipalities in drawing up a so-called species management plan (SMP) for nature-friendly insulation. Ministers De Jonge (BZK) and Van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen), the IPO, the VNG, and other interested parties see SMPs as the best solution to insulate buildings within the Nature Conservation Act (Wnb). This states, among other things, that protected animal species such as the bat, house sparrow or swift may not be disturbed or killed during (isolation) work.
Species management plan
An SMP means that municipalities conduct ecological research for an area or the entire municipality in one go. They take measures to protect the animal species present. This means that individual ecological research per home is no longer necessary.
“It is important that the insulation of homes can continue,” says Minister Hugo de Jonge of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. “With this method, this can be done efficiently, with an eye for nature.”
€40 million of the €54 million goes directly to the municipalities for drawing up, implementing and monitoring the (pre-)SMPs. €5.2 million is available to provinces for support in establishing the (pre-)SMPs and supervision and enforcement. €8.8 million has been made available to create alternative habitats for the protected species. A second tranche will follow in 2024, subject to financial decision-making.
Nature-friendly insulation and code of conduct
Insulating homes is important to keep energy costs affordable. Because drawing up an SMP will take several years, a short-term approach has been agreed that will allow insulation to continue. This concerns the ‘nature-friendly insulation’ method. This means, among other things, that for insulation work a company is hired that insulates in an environmentally friendly way (for more information see: www.natuurvriendisoleren.nl). The methodology will be formalized in the coming period into a national exemption in the form of a code of conduct. The national exemption will expire once the SMPs have been rolled out nationally. The ultimate goal is for every municipality to have an exemption through a (pre-)SMP.
Developing innovative methods
In the meantime, innovative methods are also being developed to rule out the possibility of bats roosting in a building. In a building without accommodations, no additional nature-friendly measures are required to insulate. The Nature-Friendly Insulation Task Force is working on scaling up the eDNA methodology. With eDNA, air is sucked from the space to be insulated using a device. The air from the home is taken to a laboratory. There it can then be determined whether an animal lives or has lived in the sampled space. The aim is that this methodology can be validated in early 2024 and then scaled up at a rapid pace.