European Newspaper Says Citizens Better Get Used To Not Having Electricity All The Time

One of the biggest newspapers in the Netherlands is warning its readers that Dutch citizens should get accustomed to the notion that electricity will not always be available to them in the future.

NRC, one of the largest papers in the country, published a lengthy piece on June 14 warning that the Netherlands’ green transition is driving up electricity demand more quickly than needed supporting infrastructure can be built, a situation that will likely lead to grid reliability issues if the status quo is maintained over the coming years. The authors describe how a transition away from affordable, reliable and conventional energy resources and toward green energy generation — like solar and wind — is teaming up with growing demand attributable to the country’s push to electrify industry and other parts of everyday life could overwhelm the country’s power system.

“The message is clear: the Netherlands will have to get rid of the idea that electricity is available at all times and for everyone,” a translated version of the NRC piece states. “And drastic measures will have to be taken to prevent the worst problems. But which ones and how successful they will be, grid operators and the government are largely in the dark.”

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Like nearly all of Europe, the Netherlands has aggressive emissions reductions targets to meet in the coming decades as part of a wider effort to fight climate change, including a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 relative to 1990 levels, and 80% by 2040 before ultimately reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the Dutch government. This transition will necessitate replacing fossil fuel-fired generation with green sources, but doing so will require significant advancements in battery storage technology as well as a complementary buildout of transmission and related infrastructure, the NRC piece explains.

However, corporations seeking to electrify their operations as part of the green push — numbering in the thousands — are struggling to get connected to the grid, in part because there is already a growing waiting list for connection and transmission projects, the NRC piece states. Typically, those in the queue can expect to wait several years for their requests to be completed.

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Several members of the Dutch government, as well as the country’s grid operators, have warned about the dynamic that is currently unfolding, according to NRC. The authors state that Tennet — a system operator that manages high-voltage power lines in Germany and the Netherlands — is projecting that the Netherlands will face 14 hours of power shortage per year starting in 2033.

Those shortages do not necessarily mean that the whole country will be plunged into darkness for 14 hours over the course of the year, but rather that there will be too little electricity to meet demand, according to NRC. Realistically, those shortages will more likely lead to huge spikes in electricity prices, as well as a need for some companies to voluntarily restrict or cease their operations on a temporary basis in order to bring demand down.

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