ANP
Climate and Energy Minister Rob Jetten (D66) will intervene in the electricity grid. This is what he says news hour. Among other things, it wants to accelerate the pace of granting permits for laying additional electrical cables, for example.
Jetten acknowledges that the government “should have done more” in recent years to expand the power grid. Due to the explosive increase in electricity demand, the grid is already full in many places. Jetten: “After the war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis, strengthening the electricity grid is my problem.”
Warnings for years
Jetten attributes the problem to “double success”. “There are more wind farms and solar parks that supply green energy to the grid and there are more and more companies that want to electrify and therefore also buy electricity.”
It has been going on for years put on guard that this combination would lead to a shortage on the net. Little has been done with those warnings. There are already at least 6,700 companies and institutions on the waiting list for a connection.
Electricity demand is increasing even faster this year due to the war in Ukraine. Much less gas now comes from Russia and as a result the price of gas is rising. Companies that currently still consume a lot of gas are therefore switching more rapidly to electricity.
news hour
Tuesday put on guard network operators in news hour that without drastic measures, businesses will sometimes have to wait years before they can get more electricity. Minister Jetten now promises extra investments in the electricity grid and says he will sit “on top of the licenses”.
“We now often see in large energy infrastructure projects that preparation takes too long. It takes years to obtain permits and purchase land before a shovel is even in the ground.”
The pace of projects aimed at increasing the capacity of the electricity grid must therefore increase, according to Jetten. He plans to take over “much more often” in the licenses of municipalities and provinces.
Jetten points out that the government has already announced an investment of half a billion euros in network operator Stedin on budget day. Also, he says, we need to use the existing network smarter. “In part by stimulating companies with off-peak tariffs to buy electricity at other times, but also by building energy storage in the grid.”
