The energy transition in the Netherlands is the shift from the use of fossil energy (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) to energy from renewable sources (wind, sun, and hydropower). Since its start in 2025, CBS has been involved in the program ‘Energy Transition Integral Cost Overview’ (EIK). Together with four government organizations, CBS is working on the knowledge infrastructure for an overview of the costs and benefits of the energy transition. This information is essential for politicians to make well-founded policy choices about the sustainability of the Netherlands. Complex
“The effects of sustainability policies can be very complex,” says
Nienke Maas, program secretary of TNO for EIK. “For example, consider the provision of subsidies for heat pumps.” According to Maas, this seems at first glance a straightforward and simple measure to make homes more sustainable. “But many neighborhoods cannot handle the extra load of these heat pumps on the power grid. That also means investments in electricity cables and boxes in the neighborhood. How much will that cost and who will pay for it? And what does that mean for the whole of the Netherlands? These are all questions we try to answer to paint a complete picture.”
Collaboration
Sylvia Bleker, statistical researcher, project leader, and project manager of the EIK teams at CBS, emphasizes how important the collaboration between all these institutions is. “Separately, we only have information about part of the puzzle,” says Bleker. For example, CBS has data on the number of diesel cars still on the road, and we know how much solar panel capacity is available in the Netherlands. “But the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) has a lot of knowledge and experience with subsidies and cost curves. The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) and the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) work with predictive models. Ultimately, you need all of that to get an idea of how much the transition to sustainable energy will cost.”
Streamlining
Bringing all this information together is a challenging task. “Although research topics overlap, methods and definitions may differ between institutions,” says Bleker. For example, CBS tracks how much sustainability investments cost. “We see this as a one-time amount spent in a specific year.” Companies, however, depreciate such investments over multiple years and also include long-term relief. “That is a very different way of looking at an investment, which RVO and TNO have more experience with.” It also takes a lot of time to streamline the data from all these organizations. “We aim to create the best possible basis, in which all information is aligned,” summarizes Bleker.
Green Deal
Peter Nooteboom, former program manager of the
Green Deal program at CBS, sees EIK as a continuation of many projects started during the
Green Deal. During this initiative, CBS worked with various (inter)national partners to provide coherent and accessible figures on sustainability themes. One of the most important projects was the Sustainability dashboard, an overview page with charts showing how the Netherlands is doing on various parts of the
Green Deal. “All the information we have collected around themes such as climate adaptation, CO
2 emissions, and environmental quality is also important for EIK,” says Nooteboom. “It is nice to see that the hard work and good relationships built up are not lost.”
Educational
Due to the size and ambitions of EIK, many CBS employees are involved in the multi-year program. “Fifteen colleagues have now joined,” says Bleker. “They work in various departments: energy, national accounts, government financing, and health.” Also within CBS itself, researchers encounter difficulties when they want to link information. “We are actually doing the project here on a small scale,” Bleker says laughing. “That is very educational.
