Without natural gas, the Netherlands will be stuck. But the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency is blind to this

Utrecht and other regions are turning to natural gas due to an overcrowded power grid, outgoing climate minister Rob Jetten, grid operators Stedin and Tennet and the province reported this week. We could have seen this coming ten years ago, but now it is presented as ‘news’. Also last week, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) called electricity ‘the workhorse of the energy transition’. ‘In cost-optimal ways to a climate-neutral Netherlands in 2050, electricity production will grow by a factor of three to five,’ it was said. So that workhorse already appears to be lame.

In Germany it was reported earlier this month that the European power grid is unsuitable for the ambitious ‘Energiewende‘. The above-ground high-voltage grid in regions, but also the underground low-voltage grid in cities and districts, cannot cope with the growth in electricity consumption and increasing fluctuations in wind and solar power. Moreover, there is no effective large-scale storage technology for electricity, so we remain dependent on 100 percent fossil generation capacity for security of supply.

Where is the practicality?

When Stedin, Tennet and their peers have expanded the grid in ten years’ time for the current power supply and consumption, it will again be too small for the sharply increased power supply and consumption that the PBL advocates. Why does the PBL not mention this likely scenario? The PBL does advocate ‘policy acceleration’, but policy is a paper tiger that does nothing concrete. Effective policy in a healthy democracy with a connection between politics and society is mainly characterized by practical feasibility, and not by lofty and ever-growing ambitions. This feasibility is no longer limited by lagging policy or a lack of money. Our scarce labor, space and raw materials determine how quickly we can build high-voltage pylons, wind turbines, solar parks, hydrogen factories and underground CO2 storage. Yet the PBL insists that we must do everything: ‘not either-or, but both-and’. However, choosing everything is choosing nothing, and a characteristic of ineffective policy without strategy.

“It is technically feasible: the Netherlands is climate neutral in 2050,” the PBL states in the report published this week Climate neutral trajectory exploration 2050. It seems impossible to me that a government body can determine this so unequivocally for our small country 26 years in the future, in a big world full of unpredictable and uncontrollable developments. It seems inconceivable to me that there are no reasonable doubts about this, and that there are no scenarios in which it turns out not to be feasible. I find it unacceptable that such an expert institute with so many resources does not raise substantiated questions about the feasibility of climate goals and does not seriously criticize the climate approach.

It is a serious omission that these questions and criticism are withheld from us by an authoritative and influential institution that is paid for with our tax money. It is also a serious shortcoming that no plausible scenarios have been described in which the Netherlands cannot be climate neutral in 2050. This makes the PBL report one-sided and unbelievable. The planning agency is suspected of only writing down what government, politicians and society want to hear, of not being open about what they should hear, and of allocating towards a politically desired outcome.

Calculation is missing

The recent history of pandemic, war, energy crisis and inflation shows that there is every reason for doubts and unwelcome scenarios. Careful calculations based on the information in the PBL report confirm this. The PBL can also perform this calculation, but has apparently withheld it or not done so. I don’t know what would be worse.

Is that calculation done? We should have at least 10 wind turbines and 200,000 solar panels in the next 25 years weekly have to build, without interruption. After 2050, with a lifespan of 25 years, we should continue to build at the same pace forever. We would also need to build barely existing technology and storage capacity for about 140 billion kilowatt hours, more than our total current annual power consumption. And yet we will not even have enough grid capacity for that current power consumption in the next ten years.

We also have to build three nuclear power stations that are twice as large as the current Borssele. Perhaps that is one of the few elements in the PBL report that will prove feasible. In any case, it is necessary to somewhat stabilize the increasing imbalance in electricity supply and consumption. Solar panels, for example, have a strongly countercyclical effect. They produce a lot of electricity in warm light periods and little in colder dark periods. The demand for electricity does exactly the opposite. This may have been one of the reasons in Utrecht to revert to natural gas for home heating.

Windmills work less countercyclically than solar panels, but are just as variable and unpredictable on a daily and weekly basis. Apart from fossil backup capacity, we have no solution to bridge the growing mismatch in power supply and demand for more than a few hours. Voluntary or forced supply-driven electricity consumption will not help much, insiders at Tennet also believe, because the increasing structural mismatch extends over weeks (weather changes) and even months (seasonal changes).

PBL can and must do better

‘It is very important to consider the energy and raw materials system integrally,’ writes the PBL. Why doesn’t the planning agency do that itself? The uncritical promotion of the climate goals and approach, and the failure to mention serious uncertainties, risks and unwelcome scenarios, testify to a one-sided and therefore non-integral consideration.

According to the PBL, we should ‘switch to electricity where possible’. That is a bizarre recommendation, given the emergency use of natural gas by Utrecht and other regions, and given the structural and long-term grid congestion that we, like many countries around us, will have to deal with until well after 2030. The PBL, which should serve and support every tax-paying citizen and entrepreneur in improving our living environment, can and must do much better than this.

Maarten van Andel is a chemist and published ‘Choose Wiser Climate.’ in 2023. Practical guide for consumers and voters’. This illuminating book was published by Uitgeverij Blauwburgwal, costs €17.50 and is available everywhere, too in the Wynia’s Week store.

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