Exit blown-through house and drill for gas under the North Sea: this is how Chamber wants to get rid of Russian gas | Politics

And the answer to that question has also occupied the House of Representatives for years. In a debate about natural gas, VVD MP Silvio Erkens noted that it was already said in 2014 after the invasion of Crimea by Russia that ‘we want to quickly reduce our dependence on Russian gas’. “We now have to make sure that it is not just words,” said the liberal.

But that’s easier said than done. The worldwide demand for liquid gas, for example, is so great that it is questionable whether it is possible to purchase LNG at a decent price. Other obvious options, such as better insulating houses – for which the Chamber can be prodded from left to right – are also not easily arranged due to the high demand for them and the lack of personnel.

CDA MP Henri Bontenbal wants the government to set standards for landlords of homes with the lowest energy labels. “We want to ensure that the homes with the energy labels E, F and G are made more sustainable by landlords as quickly as possible in the coming years, on pain of a rent freeze or rent reduction,” explains the CDA member. For example, the MP hopes not only that the tenants in the so-called ‘through-air homes’ will be warm again, but also that natural gas consumption will fall sharply. It is also something that his party colleague Hugo de Jonge – the shoe lover who has already received painted boots several times in his new role as Minister of Housing – will fight for it.

Like his coalition partner of the VVD, Silvio Erkens, Bontenbal thinks that ‘the Netherlands cannot escape more gas extraction under the North Sea’. The coalition agreement also stated that the cabinet ‘supports gas extraction in the North Sea’. But with the current supply problems, it seems that the gas tap there really needs to be opened further. “I’d rather have gas from the North Sea than from Russia, or the much less clean shale gas from the US,” said Bontenbal.

According to VVD member Erkens, ‘Climate Minister Jetten is a little bit around it in his letter’, but if it is up to him, there is ‘no taboo on coal-fired power stations’. Such environmentally polluting ways of generating energy cannot count on support from the left-wing parties.

PvdA and GroenLinks want that is what it wants Russian Gazprom to be evicted from Bergermeer gas storage as soon as possible† According to the party, it is largely due to the Russian state-owned company that this year this storage was “not 90, but only 30 percent full”. The Bergermeer gas storage near Alkmaar is the second largest in the Netherlands. Gazprom is involved in the management of the former gas field and has a large part of the storage capacity at its disposal.

PvdA MP Joris Thijssen suspects malicious intent. “It appears that Putin has deliberately reduced our gas supplies in order to drive up the price and increase his war chest. As a result, many Dutch people are now in major financial problems.”