Nitrogen crisis prevented construction of 23,000 homes since 2019

The nitrogen crisis wasn’t the biggest obstacle to housing construction in the Netherlands in recent years, but it did have a clear effect. Without the restrictive nitrogen rules, about 23,000 more homes would have been built since mid-2019 than were actually constructed, Trouw reports based on new research by real estate consultancy Colliers.

Colliers studied the effects of the Council of State’s ruling in May 2019 that scrapped the Nitrogen Approach Program. Since then, construction projects have had to show that they would not cause additional nitrogen emissions in Natura 2000 areas before construction could start.

Housing construction seems to have managed to somewhat work around these limitations, partly thanks to the “construction exemption” that took effect in 2021. In that exemption, temporary nitrogen emissions during demolition and construction did not count, only the emissions from new, occupied homes. The Council of State scrapped that exemption in November 2022.

According to Colliers’ chief economist Madeline Buijs, based on data from the University of Groningen, the number of homes under construction within a 5-kilometer radius of a Natura 2000 area showed a clear dip in 2019. Recovery followed in the years after, but not enough to make up for the effect of the dip. All in all that resulted in the loss of 23,000 new homes since May 2019, she concluded.

Roughly 300,000 new homes were built in that period, so the nitrogen crisis did not have a massive effect. The number of construction permits continues to decline - from almost 76,000 in 2021 to an estimated 55,000 in 2023 - but the nitrogen crisis is only partly to blame, housing market professor Peter Boelhouwer told Trouw. “High interest rates and increased construction costs, lengthy procedures and a shortage of civil servants at municipalities, these are the biggest obstacles to housing construction,” he summed up.