What is going on in the country that last year became the global leader in generating solar energy. And are we not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, asks Dries Zwart of the Party for the North.
The Dagblad van het Noorden reported on Thursday, May 2, that owners of solar panels are in a bind because of the feed-in tax. A clear and concise article explaining why energy companies charge a feed-in tax to owners of solar panels. If they do not do this, this means that the netting scheme (the difference between what you use yourself and what you supply back to the grid) will cost the energy companies money, which will then be charged to all customers, including the people who do not have solar panels.
The entire article discusses the how and why of the scheme and Martien Visser, lecturer in energy transition at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, gives his view on the situation. Interesting, for sure. But what is striking is that the entire article does not mention the environment. Because, wasn’t that originally the intention to encourage people to purchase solar panels? After all, generating solar power does not release any environmental pollutants or greenhouse gases. For example, with 10 solar panels on your roof you can save 1,200 kilos of CO2 emissions per year. In other words, as a household you reduce your CO2 footprint
and actively contribute to the further greening of the earth. Unfortunately, we have now forgotten that aspect of the whole money discussion, because that is what we are talking about.
Sales of solar panels have now fallen considerably and, in line with the discussion surrounding the feed-in tax, sales of heat pumps, on which the government wants to focus so heavily, have also completely collapsed. And that makes sense. It’s about trust, the citizen is not crazy. If you are unlucky enough to be with an energy company that imposes a feed-in tax on you in the summer and in the winter, when the yield from solar panels is much lower, charges the top price for your higher demand for electricity (the heat pump is then running at full speed). ), then you’ll think twice.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as I stated at the beginning of the article. To meet the increasing demand for electricity, we must do everything we can to keep the lights on in living rooms in the future. To give you a clear picture, I will give you some figures. In 2022, the Netherlands used 120 Terrawatts (that is 120 billion kilowatt hours) of electricity, in 2030 this will increase to 182 Terrawatts and in 2050, experts predict, demand will have risen to 250 Terrawatts. So we need all those solar panels, but also wind energy and other energy sources, such as geothermal heat, to meet that increasing demand. So, it is important to encourage the use of solar panels by citizens. That’s not happening now.
We face important choices. And there are also threats. For example, would there still be enough power if all citizens were there tomorrow?
switch off their solar panels because they disagree with the energy companies’ policies. And what happens if everyone buys a battery en masse and no longer supplies electricity to the grid? Are we then in acute shortage? Or do we then opt for even more solar parks and wind turbines on land, which ruin our valuable and beautiful landscape.
There’s a lot to think about. There are currently only 15% of roofs with solar panels, so we must do everything we can to increase that percentage. The current policy of the energy companies does not fit in with this, because then the transition to a greener society, for which it all started, is doomed to failure.
