Making the Netherlands more resilient to external threats requires cooperation and a strong domestic energy supply. On Prinsjesdag, the Dutch Budget Day, the Speech from the Throne and the Climate and Energy Outlook underline the importance of affordable and reliable energy for households and businesses. By reducing our dependence on energy from abroad, we build a position of strength and improve energy security for society.
The energy landscape is changing and becoming more sustainable. While a climate-neutral energy system will eventually become the norm, we still need natural gas to heat homes and keep industry—and therefore our economy—running. Electrification also makes dispatchable power capacity increasingly important. Gas-fired power stations will remain necessary for the time being because insufficient carbon-free flexible capacity is available.
According to the Climate and Energy Outlook (KEV), we will still need approximately 16–22 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually in 2040, compared with current consumption in the Netherlands of around 30 billion cubic metres a year. This confirms the outlook previously outlined in TNO’s ADAPT and TRANSFORM scenarios. Declining domestic production and remaining gas demand create a challenge when import dependence also needs to fall. This provides a reason to accelerate and scale up Dutch gas production. Moreover, Dutch gas is produced more cleanly than imported liquefied natural gas, and 70 cents of every euro earned goes to the Dutch Treasury.
The Speech from the Throne links future prosperity to cleaner industries and identifies CO₂ storage infrastructure as one of the investments the government is urgently pursuing. Meeting the climate challenge and decarbonising industry requires not only investment, such as the €1.3 billion for carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure, but also the timely development of CO₂ storage and capture to get the value chain up and running. Suitable depleted gas fields and reusable infrastructure offer opportunities for CO₂ storage and transport.
Scaling up Dutch natural gas production and developing CO₂ storage must now proceed in parallel. This will help secure energy supplies, support prosperity by retaining industry, strengthen the energy system and meet CO₂ emissions reduction targets.
We are not doing this alone. Last year, together with the government, we concluded the Sector Agreement on Gas Production in the Energy Transition. Its implementation must be accelerated. We must also take concrete steps to scale up gas production and other forms of domestic energy production as quickly as possible. Establishing a functioning CCS value chain through investment certainty and swift permitting is also essential if we want a thriving green industrial sector rather than one that relocates abroad.
We therefore call for concrete implementation plans, predictable permitting, shorter administrative objection and appeal procedures, and decisive action to implement the Sector Agreement and establish the CCS value chain.
Gerda Verburg, Chair of Element NL, said: “The Speech from the Throne sets out the ambition: a resilient Netherlands with a clean economy and affordable, reliable energy. Achieving that ambition requires decisions today that enable investment and projects to move forward. We must therefore make use of our domestic energy resources, including the Dutch natural gas we will continue to need for the time being, and accelerate the development of CO₂ storage so that industry can decarbonise here in the Netherlands. The members of Element NL stand ready to work with the government to make this happen.”
