Report

Factsheet ‘Unprofitable component of collective heating systems’

While the Netherlands has numerous options for transitioning to a zero-gas built environment, almost all the alternatives currently come at a higher price than the traditional gas-fired option, i.e. with an ‘unprofitable component’. As a first step towards assessing this unprofitable component, a factsheet was drawn up using practical data to examine this figure for end users switching from a central-heating boiler to a collective heating system (heat grid). Data from ten recent heat grid projects (with a total of around 8,000 connections) were used to assess real-world end-user costs, both domestic and upstream.

The analysis shows how much end users need to spend on transitioning to a ‘living-expense-neutral’ situation, as negotiated in the Dutch Climate Agreement. This works out at almost € 9,000 euro per home. This means that an average of € 615 mln. end-user subsidies will be required annually through to 2030 to eventually switch 700,000 homes to a heat grid in a living-expense-neutral manner.

To obtain a proper picture of the total unprofitable component of a living-expense-neutral transition to zero-gas (through to 2030), this analysis needs to be carried out for individual heating systems, too.

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