The municipality of Gouda aims to become a sustainable city and achieve CO2 neutrality by 2040. This is ten years earlier than the national government, which has the ambition to reduce CO2 emissions by 55% by 2030 and by 95% by 2050 compared to 1990 emissions.
The municipality is currently working on an integrated sustainability plan, including a roadmap with interim targets, to achieve this goal. As the starting point for this roadmap, CE Delft has assessed the current climate policy of Gouda and determined its impact on greenhouse gas emissions using the CEKER model. This was done to answer the question of whether the municipality of Gouda is on the right track with its current policy to achieve the goal of climate neutrality by 2040.
We conclude that, with its current policy measures, the municipality of Gouda will not meet its CO2 reduction target for 2040. According to our forecast, emissions will be reduced by a maximum of 77% by 2040 compared to 1990. However, this will require Gouda to implement all of its currently broadly defined visions in concrete terms. As a result, the actual achievement of the goal is expected to be even lower.