Over a third of housing construction projects at risk over nitrogen emissions standards

The recent court rulings over nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands put over a third of the planned housing construction projects at risk. That amounts to 244,000 homes, AD reports from a confidential inventory by the construction industry association, Bouwend Nederland. Three-quarters of non-residential construction plans, including schools and hospitals, are also at risk of being scrapped.

This is the first time that the consequences of the recent nitrogen rulings and policy changes for construction have been mapped out in detail. Minister Femke Wiersma of Agriculture scrapped the previous government’s nitrogen policy without putting anything new in place. In January, the court in The Hague ruled that the government must do more to prevent nature from being damaged by nitrogen precipitation. And at the end of last year, the Council of State scrapped internal balancing in the construction sector. That allowed new construction to start without a nature permit if the expected nitrogen emissions could be offset.

Bouwend Nederland found that of the 631,000 homes planned for construction until 2030, 244,000 are at risk of being halted due to the nitrogen emission standards. That’s more than a third. For non-residential construction, it's three-quarters.

The construction industry association also put it into amounts to make the consequences crystal clear. “It affects 138 billion euros in investments,” Bouwend Nederland chairman Arno Visser told AD. “That is absurd. As a country, you cannot afford that.”

The inventory also makes clear that the government chronically overestimates the total number of new construction plans. There are currently only 631,000 homes in the pipeline for construction. “So not at all 1.3 million as is sometimes said,” Visser said. And then a third of those are at risk of being scrapped.

Bouwend Nederland presented its inventory to the involved Ministers on Wednesday at a confidential meeting. “The time bomb has been made visible,” Visser said. He hopes that these figures will impress the urgency of the situation to the government. “In political The Hague, it usually happens that when problems become too big or incomprehensible, they are quickly formulated too abstractly and answered with policy instead of implementation.”

Visser couldn’t tell AD how the government took the figures. That’s confidential. He called it crystal clear that emissions need to be tackled “at the source” and with no time to lose. “In all branches: in construction, in industry, among farmers,” Visser said. “We need to invest in improving nature, biodiversity, etc. Because with everything you do, the judge will ask: what is the state of nature?’

In the meantime, he urged municipalities and provinces to start building projects that still have a chance. “Get started on projects that you can pull off as quickly as possible,” Visser said. “Don’t let them fall behind. That will create time for the Cabinet to come up with a solution for the other projects.”