NL residents spent over €11 billion on making their homes more sustainable last year

Last year, Netherlands residents spent 11.3 billion euros on making their homes more sustainable, about 30 percent more than the year before. More is needed, the Dutch Sustainable Energy Association (NVDE) said.

According to market research agency Multiscope, households want to save on energy costs, especially those living in homes with low energy labels. Gas and electricity prices, among other things, have risen sharply since the summer of 2021, partly due to the war in Ukraine.

In 2021, people spent 8.6 billion euros on sustainability, 30 percent less than last year. An “absurd increase,” market analyst Sven de Bruijn said. “More households have started to become more sustainable, and we have made more adjustments per house.” Almost 6 in 10 households have become more sustainable in at least one way.

Households spent the most sustainability money on solar energy at 38 percent of the total amount. They also spent 37 percent on insulation. According to De Bruijn, this is because these are larger investments. “Many people cannot install solar panels on the roofs themselves. They have to have that done by a third party, so they outsource more.”

The NVDE thinks the government should take a structural approach to make homes more sustainable, district by district. That way, the Netherlands can save energy more efficiently and tackle energy poverty more effectively, the NVDE said based on research by Ecorys. According to the NVDE, over 1.1 million households could receive a structurally lower energy bill for the money the Cabinet set aside for the energy price cap this year.

Doing work district by district will also work out cheaper for companies. This approach could also combine all the fragmented subsidy schemes and make it possible for grid operators to better plan where electricity needs to be saved, which can make a difference in resolving the pressure on the electricity network.

Households with solar panels can feed power they do not use back into the electricity grid, which also puts extra pressure on the grid. Because the electricity grid is filling up in more and more places, it is sometimes impossible for solar panel owners to push excess energy back into it. TenneT wants to invest over 10 billion euros up to 2031 in increasing capacity to solve such problems.

NVDE proposed that the government develop a “generous scheme for the large-scale approach to home improvement,” starting in neighborhoods with the most energy poverty, said chairman Olof van der Gaag.

According to Van der Gaag, such involvement by the government is comparable to what happened in offshore wind energy. "Ten years ago, everyone wanted offshore wind energy. But it was still expensive. And companies were hesitant to invest," he sketches the parallel. "Because the government promised a predictable, planned roll-out of offshore wind and took on the bureaucracy, companies dared to take the plunge, and costs quickly fell. We would also like to see such an approach for home improvement."