Meanwhile, the country’s system – established in 2004 – that allows families with solar panels to offset their green electricity production with their consumption – now has more than 2 million homes producing renewable energy, according to the Energy Department.
A spokesperson for the energy ministry told Reuters by email that the Dutch government is still assessing how local planning and financial support can be changed to encourage more solar farm construction to blend into the landscape.
Joeri Jacobs, who focuses on building green energy projects at waste management company Afvalzorg, described the Dutch approach to renewable energy as “extremely MacGyver-ish — referring to an 1980s American TV show about a handyman who assembles innovative devices from everyday objects.
“We take different energy technologies, combine them and try to make a combination that works,” explains Jacobs, whose company has partnered with a local utility to convert abandoned landfills into solar farms. “It takes a while, but when everyone hops on the same train, it’s faster to get these projects done.”
Solar panels were installed on the roof of a building during the annual Rotterdam Rooftop event in Rotterdam. The initiative aims to show how rooftops contribute to a healthy, vibrant and resilient city.Pierre Krum/Getty Images
Local interests first
Roughly 20% of the lowland country’s surface is water, and solar energy promoters, including GroenLeven, have taken advantage of setting up farms on man-made lakes.
The company has installed more than 500,000 solar panels in Dutch waters, leaving the Netherlands behind China globally when looking at this type of location, the company noted.The idea of floating solar platforms appeared in the Netherlands earlier than in other countries said Benedikt Ortmann, global director of solar projects at German renewable energy company BayWare, which acquired GroenLeven in 2018.
two The Netherlands today has an average of two solar panels per capita — and an installed capacity of more than 1 kilowatt (KW) per capita — making the country the solar powerhouse per capita in Europe, according to industry association Solar Power Europe.
Inspired by the Dutch example, BayWare said it is now developing more floating solar installations in European countries such as Belgium, Austria and France.
Dutch companies are also looking at ways to make solar energy facilities work in tandem with agricultural production. “Rather than having to fight over who gets access to the land, we came up with solutions to use it together,” suggests Karel Koeij, business development manager for large-scale photovoltaics (PV) at the Dutch branch of Swedish public company Vattenfall.
A project called “Agri-PV” involves growing strawberries and blueberries under a solar panel roof, replacing the plastic sheeting traditionally used by farmers in greenhouses. Halfway through the four-year pilot project, project leaders said the plants needed 25% less water because they were out of the sun, which could save water for irrigation in the future when Climate change It brings hotter and drier summers.
In general, Dutch solar developers say new projects should be designed with local concerns in mind. The country’s climate plan for 2019, for example, says so Renewable energy projects should aim to allocate 50% of the green energy they produce to the local population .
Although this is not legally binding, developers tend to invest in the community – from sending a percentage of the renewable energy produced to local energy cooperatives, for example, or creating a socio-economic fund to make improvements to Energy efficiency .
Solar analysts and contractors say the expansion has been driven by a significant drop in equipment prices, an efficient energy subsidy scheme, and ambitious government goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Because the Netherlands is a small country, we are always working in someone’s backyard,” notes Robert van der Horst, project developer at TPSolar. So, he notes, “You always need to talk to people and discuss what’s best for a particular area. Then you try to improve that with your own solar farm.”
