The net-metering scheme for solar panels must be completely scrapped by January 1, 2027. So write PVV, NSC, VVD and BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) who form the new cabinet in their outline agreement.
Where the 4 parties in the mainline agreement ‘Hope, guts and pride’ do not mention solar panels at all, they write in the budgetary annex that they want to completely abolish the balancing scheme on January 1, 2027.
No majority in Senate
However, the abolition of net-metering must first be approved by both the Lower and Upper Houses of Parliament. That this will succeed is not certain because the new coalition does not have a majority in the Senate.
While newcomer BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) holds 16 seats, the VVD (10 seats) and PVV (4 seats) actually lost a number of seats in the Upper House in the Provincial Council elections. Moreover, Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC has no senators in the Upper House at all. Below the line, therefore, the new coalition holds only 30 of the 75 seats, and the green light from the Senate for ending net-metering is far from certain.
Cost
Indeed, thanks to the dissenting vote of the BBB and GroenLinks-PvdA, it was precisely last February that the Upper House rejected Minister Jetten’s bill to phase out the net-metering scheme starting January 1, 2025. The BBB’s negative vote was also in line with the party’s election manifesto, in which the BBB announced its intention to postpone abolishing the balancing system until at least 2030 and when at least 5 million households would have recouped their solar panels.
As a counter-reaction to the Senate’s voting down of the phase-out bill, a large number of energy companies have announced fixed feed-in tariffs in recent months to halt the escalating costs of the balancing scheme for them. Voting down Jeten’s bill also meant that the new cabinet had to look for financial cover for the €2.8 billion hole in the budget that maintaining the balancing scheme will cost the national government in the period up to and including 2031. The four parties want to cover that hole by completely scrapping the energy-saving scheme from 2027.
Saving
PVV, NSC, VVD and BBB also reverse the reduction of the SME profit exemption announced in the Spring Memorandum 2024. With that reduction, the current caretaker cabinet intended to save 93 million euros to absorb in the short term part of the costs of maintaining netting.
n the outline agreement, the 4 parties that will form the new cabinet write to achieve the following savings by scrapping net-metering. Incidentally, ending the net-metering scheme is good news for the home battery, as it significantly improves the business case for storing solar energy.
End of feed-in charges?
With the abolition of net-metering, it is also to be expected that in the near future the power companies will start to phase out the fixed feed-in costs they introduced for consumers with solar panels.
2 of the 3 largest energy companies operating in the Netherlands recently introduced fixed feed-in tariffs. For example, Eneco makes every solar panel customer pay 11.5 euro cents per kilowatt-hour of solar energy delivered back. Vattenfall, for its part, uses fixed scales of feed-in costs. Consumers with solar panels who have a variable contract or a new fixed contract will start paying these on July 1.
Formation of a new government
Informateur Richard van Zwol was asked by the party leaders of PVV, NSC, VVD and BBB “with a view to continuity in the cabinet formation” to serve as formateur to form the new “program cabinet” and to select the new cabinet members together with the parties.
The new cabinet must incorporate the outline agreement named “Hope, guts and pride” into a final coalition program in the coming period.
Source: Solar Magazine, Edwin van Gastel