SDE+ scheme reopened in autumn

The autumn round for projects with an SDE+ subsidy is open from 2 October to 8 November 2018. It was also announced that the spring round had yielded 4.535 applications. The vast majority of those applications went to solar energy projects.

Eric Wiebes, Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, announced in a letter to the House of Representatives that for the autumn round of the SDE+ again €6 billion will be made available from the Renewable Energy Incentive Scheme (SDE+).

The spring round of the SDE+ subsidy is now closed. In total, 4.535 applications have been submitted, and of the total budget €5,3 billion has been allocated to projects. By far the largest share of this went to solar energy projects (4.369 applications).

Budget not fully used
More than €0,7 billion will not be used. This is because the budget for the SDE+ scheme is currently at the highest level, while there is not an infinite supply of projects, capacity and project developers.

In the letter, Wiebes discusses solar panels on farmland: "I prefer to use suitable roofs and non-productive land first, before large-scale systems on agricultural land come into the picture. For this reason, I have asked the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) to no longer use a land compensation in the SDE+ scheme. This is even more so because the basic amount does not take into account compensation for roof installations.

Wind at sea
Any energy generation by offshore wind is not included in the regular SDE+ opening, but separate tenders are being launched for this. After the tenders of recent years, offshore wind has become increasingly cheaper.

The minister will elaborate on the progress of the target to generate 6.000 megawatts of wind energy by 2020. At the end of 2017, 3.249 megawatts of operational capacity from wind turbines on land was available in the Netherlands. This means that 54% of the target has been achieved, which means that an improvement has been achieved (compared to last year). However, the minister also states that he does not expect the target of 6.000 megawatts to be achieved.

Climate agreement
On Tuesday 10 July it was announced that the government is strongly committed to renewable energy with the Climate Agreement. The agreement sees a growth in renewable electricity generation from 14% to 70% by 2030. It means even more money will go to solar panels and windmills.

Anne-Jan Doorn

Anne Jan Doorn is an arable expert at Boerenbusiness. He writes about the various arable farming markets and also focuses on the land and energy market.

aj.doorn@boerenbusiness. Nl

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