News from the NOS•today, 09:49
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Marleen de Rooy
Political journalist
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Marleen de Rooy
Political journalist
The cabinet has great difficulty in finding a solution for people who have a common heating boiler, the so-called block heating.
Their joint boiler distributes the heat to all residents. The price cap the government has come up with to help people isn’t a solution for them, because everyone uses a lot more than the average family. Above the maximum price, the market price of energy applies.
According to data from the Dutch Association for Consumption-Dependent Energy, there are 600,000 houses with autonomous heating in the Netherlands. These are mainly large apartments built in the 1960s, but many other residential groups also have this type of connection.
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NOS / Sjoerd Mouissie
Percentage of households with independent heating, by neighborhood -
NOS / Sjoerd Mouissie
Percentage of households with independent heating, by neighborhood -
NOS / Sjoerd Mouissie
Percentage of households with independent heating, by district
“Often these are old apartments with such heating,” explains MEP Pieter Omtzigt. “Often also apartments where people with lower incomes live. If you want to make sure that people don’t fall below the subsistence minimum, you will simply have to help this group.”
The problem arises for example in the neighborhood of Oud-Charlois in Rotterdam, where there is a residential community with artists and self-employed workers from the cultural sector. Now they pay around 35 euros per household in energy costs, which will soon be an average of 200 euros.
“At first we thought: this is well organized with that price cap,” says Nathan van der Meijden, resident. “Then we discovered that we live in a form of housing that is not actually counted. We feel forgotten.”
And this is what the whole community struggles with:
Residents of the apartments do not benefit from the maximum energy price cap: “From 35 to 200 euros”
Residents are looking for ways to save costs, but it’s difficult. Precisely because a lot has been done in recent years to make it more sustainable. “We have solar panels, everything is very well insulated,” says Nienke de Wijk, who does the administration on behalf of the residential group. “So no, consumption here can’t be much lower. We just stop showering.”
The motion by MP Omtzigt to also help people in such situations was adopted by a majority in the House of Representatives. But the big question is: what about the effect?
ChristenUnie thinks of a fixed amount per inhabitant. “One solution for November and December could be: give back 190 euros a month to everyone who has autonomous heating,” says Pieter Grinwis of ChristenUnie. It is simply not ideal, he admits, “because then there is no incentive to consume less energy”.
Quick decision making
Furthermore, there are practical problems. For example, no authority has good information on who has the heating block. For example, energy companies don’t know if it’s being used a lot on one connection, why someone has a swimming pool, or why a hundred people use it. Municipalities and the tax and customs administration also say they do not have this information ready.
According to Omtzigt, the fact that these kinds of issues have not been properly considered has to do with the rapid decision-making process. “If you have to find out in three days something that works for 8 million families, you make mistakes. Then you forget about district heating and independent heating. To make a good plan, you only need a few months”.
The government has promised to submit a proposal shortly on how these people can still be helped.
