News Nitrogen
List of peak loaders, but with old data
The list of peak loaders - which the government initially said it did not have - is based on old data. This is in the 'concept analysis', which the cabinet itself has released. The article is more intended to get an idea of the peak tax issue, than to get a precise overview of where which company is located, as noted.
LNV has asked RIVM to make an overview of all peak loaders, according to the draft analysis. This has resulted in an (anonymised) list of more than 3.500 business locations, but with data that is 'several years old'.
The document also shows that the purchase and also the deprivation of permits cannot be completed within a year, as Johan Remkes said during his press conference on October 5. Parties that do not want to participate in the purchase and termination of permits can extend the process from 3,5 to 5 years after the start.
The purchase could remove a lot of deposition on nature, but the broader the purchase, the less effective the funds used. By buying out the top 100 peak-loaders in agriculture and industry (out of a group of 3.500), more than half of all emissions from the group of peak-loaders could be removed, according to RIVM.
However, the researchers Matt Briggs and Jaap Hanekamp state in their latest study that the group of peak loaders cannot be identified (and therefore not bought up) using the Aerius calculation model, as the government wants. This reports the Agrifacts Foundation. In 2020, it found advisory board Measurement and Calculation Nitrogen the fact that Aerius is unsuitable for the government's local nitrogen policy, as both researchers recall. This is due to the large uncertainties in the calculation results at the local level. Now those uncertainties appear to be even greater for peak loaders in particular, they conclude.
Large margins of uncertainty
Their findings are based on data from a WOO request from farmer director Jan Cees Vogelaar. This showed that underlying test studies for Aerius' computational core, OPS, have a very large margin of uncertainty. This makes Aerius unsuitable for the current government policy at location level. New information that Briggs and Hanekamp were able to request thanks to the WOO request shows that the uncertainty of the OPS calculation model increases as the local emission source increases. With what are now called peak loaders, the calculation uncertainty is therefore even greater than what the Advisory Board has already indicated. This already took into account uncertainties between 10% and 100%. According to them, this means that Aerius cannot possibly demonstrate how much nitrogen a 'peak loader' emits on a nature reserve.
Klaas van der Horst
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