Last year, more renewable energy was again generated in the Netherlands than the year before. The production of ‘green’ electricity has also increased significantly. As a result, a number of the goals agreed in the Energy Agreement in 2013 have now been achieved. The Energy Agreement is a precursor to the 2019 Climate Agreement.
That appears from Numbers published on Thursday by the National Climate Platform (NKP). The government established this in 2022 to, among other things, map the progress of the energy transition. The NKP also monitors the progress of broader climate policy.
The total amount of ‘green’ energy (think of energy obtained from biomass) grew by 13 percent in 2023 compared to 2022. This brings the share of ‘renewable’ in the total energy supply to 17 percent at the end of this year. That is slightly more than the 2023 target of 16 percent.
In recent years, the government has regularly threatened to miss targets for ‘green’ energy. For example, in 2020 the percentage was supposed to be 14 percent, but the Netherlands did not go further than 11.4 percent. Only through an ‘accounting’ deal with Denmark – the Netherlands bought excess production capacity from that country on paper – did the government achieve the target.
More than necessary
The amount of sustainably generated electricity (think of electricity produced with wind turbines and solar panels) increased even faster last year. 50 percent of total electricity production is now green. Last year that was still 41 percent. The green energy is largely generated with solar panels and then by wind turbines on land. Electricity only provides a relatively limited part of the energy requirement: approximately 20 percent. Heating (for example, houses and buildings) makes up a much larger part of this: 55 percent. The remaining 25 percent concerns fuels for cars, ships and aircraft.
The NKP also outlines a downside to the growth of green energy. There are now more and more times when “more renewable electricity was generated than we needed or could export in the Netherlands.” To prevent waste, this electricity must be able to be stored, for example in batteries. But there are not enough of them now. On the electricity market, this translates into negative electricity prices: customers who still want to purchase electricity are paid for it by the supplier. Until Thursday, there were 308 hours in which the electricity price was negative. Last year there were ‘only’ 85 such hours in total.
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The strong growth also causes overload on the power grid. The demand for electricity is expected to increase in the coming years, for example because companies are ‘electrifying’. But that growth will not be sufficient to accommodate the growing production, the NKP expects, so this problem will persist.