The Netherlands is the country where all passenger trains are powered by wind energy, where your groceries can be delivered by all-electric vans, and where people cycle over solar bike lanes, so the Dutch must be sustainability champions, right? Absolutely not.
The fact of the matter is that the Dutch are not, not even close. Compared to its fellow EU member states, the Netherlands comes in at an embarrassingly low 26th position in terms of the share of renewables in the energy mix. In 2014, 5.5% of the Netherlands’ energy was generated sustainably.
Out of the 28 EU countries, only Malta (4.7%) and Luxembourg (4.5%) performed worse. But those have very few inhabitants and small territories, Luxembourg being a landlocked city-state and Malta a densely populated island with a much lower per capita income than the Dutch.
By other measures, the Netherlands is not doing any better. In a 2015 report by the European Energy Agency, the Netherlands was found to be the only EU member state who was not on track for reaching the EU-wide targets set under the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which is the European Commission’s program for ensuring the EU as a whole will reach 20% renewable energy by 2020 and 27% by 2030. According to the same report, the Netherlands is falling increasingly behind, as a year before there were still several other countries that were below their trajectory for reaching the RED targets.
The targets themselves are different for each member state, depending on what can “realistically” be achieved from the nation’s starting position. As depicted below, the Dutch target is already substantially under the 20% average.
Read more: Netherlands One Of Least Sustainable EU Countries. How Did The Dutch Get Their Green Image? | CleanTechnica
The fact of the matter is that the Dutch are not, not even close. Compared to its fellow EU member states, the Netherlands comes in at an embarrassingly low 26th position in terms of the share of renewables in the energy mix. In 2014, 5.5% of the Netherlands’ energy was generated sustainably.
Out of the 28 EU countries, only Malta (4.7%) and Luxembourg (4.5%) performed worse. But those have very few inhabitants and small territories, Luxembourg being a landlocked city-state and Malta a densely populated island with a much lower per capita income than the Dutch.
By other measures, the Netherlands is not doing any better. In a 2015 report by the European Energy Agency, the Netherlands was found to be the only EU member state who was not on track for reaching the EU-wide targets set under the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which is the European Commission’s program for ensuring the EU as a whole will reach 20% renewable energy by 2020 and 27% by 2030. According to the same report, the Netherlands is falling increasingly behind, as a year before there were still several other countries that were below their trajectory for reaching the RED targets.
The targets themselves are different for each member state, depending on what can “realistically” be achieved from the nation’s starting position. As depicted below, the Dutch target is already substantially under the 20% average.
Read more: Netherlands One Of Least Sustainable EU Countries. How Did The Dutch Get Their Green Image? | CleanTechnica
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