On January 1, 2020, 56 percent of the houses had an energy label of C or lower and this relatively poor insulation means you have to deal with high energy consumption and high energy bills. This can be remedied by insulating things better and preparing the house to go off the gas.
According to research institute TNO and the Central Planning Bureau (CPB), which carries out economic analyzes for the government, insulating a house built before 1992 costs an average of 19,000 euros per home. Houses built after that year are already reasonably well insulated and are therefore not included in the study.
Owners of a house built before 1992 who want to save on their energy bill will therefore have to work. Exactly what they have lost, of course, depends on the type of house and its condition.
In addition, how you will pay for the investment also plays a role. Do you do that with your own savings or do you borrow. The researchers have calculated with a mortgage with a term of 25 years at an interest rate of 4 percent.
What also matters is how much subsidy can be applied for to make the home more sustainable. But the researchers did not include that in the calculation.
What kind of house?
The main difference in investment lies in what kind of home you have. TNO and CPB have listed the following categories.
- Those who live in a semi-detached house pay just over 20,000 euros and outliers even pay 40,000 euros.
- If you live in an apartment, you are ready for more than 9500 euros.
- If you have a corner house, you will lose about 15,000 euros.
- A terraced house costs more than 16,000 euros to insulate.
- Homeowners with a detached house pay the most: almost 33,000 euros and that amount can rise to more than 70,000 euros in the worst case.
Costs something, but then you also have something. Insulating your home reduces energy bills. After insulation, residents save an average of 25 percent on their gas consumption, which amounts to about 300 cubic meters of gas per year. If we assume the current average gas price of 1.50 euros per cubic meter, that is a saving of 450 euros per year.
All households together consume 1.7 billion cubic meters less gas per year. If all houses are insulated, this will save 1.2 billion euros per year.
How that saving compares to the investment is the logical follow-up question. It pays off in 62 percent of households, the researchers conclude. There, the savings due to a lower energy bill over the longer term are higher than the amount invested in the insulation.
Yet there is also a group of 10 percent that does not make the investment, according to the researchers. Because possible subsidies have not been taken into account, it is quite possible that this group is smaller.
The bigger the house, the more difficult
For three groups, earning back the investment is the most difficult. These are households with a house larger than 150 square meters, singles and homeowners with an income of less than 40,000 euros gross per couple. For people with a low income and their own home, the average investment of 19,000 euros is more difficult to afford than for someone with a higher income.
It is striking that wealthy households (more than 120,000 euros per year) often live in poorly insulated houses. About half of people with a low income (up to 120 percent of the social minimum) live in a well-insulated house.
Total cost: 88 billion
There are a total of 8 million homes in the Netherlands. About 2.6 million houses were built after 1992 and are not included in this study because they are reasonably well insulated during construction.
This means a total of 5.4 million homes that are more than 30 years old or older. The total investment costs amount to approximately 88 billion euros (excluding VAT) to meet the current insulation standard and then these homes are suitable for switching off the gas.
Subsidies bring relief
Homeowners of owner-occupied homes pay 60 billion euros, private landlords pay 9 billion euros and housing corporations pay around 18 billion euros to properly insulate their rented homes. Homeowners and private landlords can still recover part (about 21 billion euros) of their investments through energy subsidies from the government.
Housing associations will have to bear the costs themselves and may not pass on these insulation measures to sitting tenants through a rent increase. The group of social tenants therefore benefits fully. They get a better insulated house with more living comfort, pay a lower energy bill and do not have to pay for the insulation measures.
