Development of sustainable energy is crumbling in the Netherlands, specialists warn
Development of sustainable energy is crumbling in the Netherlands, specialists warn
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/43294114
There was a big push at first, subsidising adopting green tech at both large and small scale (it was financially interesting to build big wind farms, buy a new ev and put solar panels on your roof) and the government slowly decreased those benefits over time. Since last year the biggest party is a far-right populist party who promised they will make life more affordable by cutting spending on 'leftist hobbies'.
Cut spending on renewables and then pass the costs to the end user with the oil companies collecting higher fees.
We pay for our toys one way or the other, taxes or at the pump.
This is not only on the far-right, but generally on the right spectrum. The People's Party is more interested in businesses than actually caring for the environment we live in. This could be seen by the name of the 'Ministry of Climate and Green Growth'. Apart that generally very little is accomplished by this government, I can't really remember Hermans having any meaningful proposals or implementations, except for scraping those things that were in-place or halting discussions with large corporations on their efforts on sustainability.
The Farmer's Party has a complete neglect for any climate issues, and, my sense, is that New Social Contract cares less about climate than the People's Party. And all three of them seem to be willing to give in to Wilders on this front.
Yes. European countries were among the early adopters and developers of wind and solar. Now, renewables have become the most affordable option. But, for ideological reasons, many European countries no longer want to deploy renewables, despite their affordability.
We sowed the seeds but do not want to reap the rewards.
The Netherlands has a huge grid capacity issue, but there are two much more relevant problems stopping the growth of renewable power: space and the fact that the earth is round.
The Netherlands is the most densely populated large country in Europe. Wind turbines take up quite a bit of space, and we've got a very large part of the country covered with stuff already. There isn't much room for new wind parks. There is also a steady expansion there already, and we don't have unlimited will turbine builders either.
The problem with solar is that we already have a lot of solar. Solar panels all produce the most power at the same time, which often causes an excess of electricity turning the price negative, meaning producers will turn their plants off. So a solar park will stop producing exactly when it would have been most profitable otherwise. This means the return on investment is significantly lower, below other safe investments, so people will just invest elsewhere..
And private solar panels suffer from the same issue,along energy companies charge extra to compensate for fixed-rate contracts, making them much less financially appealing for people.
