The Consumers Association is pleased to pay attention to high energy costs. “It’s a nice gesture and a quick aid. If you now want to do something about rising energy prices, you can’t avoid such an action, but you are at least helping people with it.”

According to the union, it is better to help people structurally by insulating homes. On Tuesday, the Cabinet also announced that it would allocate 1.3 billion euros to the sustainability of homes and buildings, of which half a billion would be for the national isolation programme.

Like the Consumers Association, Martin Visser, Professor of Energy Transition at the Hans University of Applied Sciences Groningen, questions the effectiveness of the reduction. “This really doesn’t do anything about energy poverty. The money doesn’t just go to the people who need it most. It’s more than candy for everyone, while the real concern is the people with poorly insulated homes.”

Energiearmoede

from The study was published yesterday Research agency TNO showed that 550,000 Dutch families live in so-called energy poverty. They have high energy bills, usually a poorly insulated home and low income. They spend between 13 and 20 percent of their income on energy, compared to an average of 5 percent for all households.

Peter Mulder, Researcher at TNO: “This tax credit is like a plaster on a wound, but the wound doesn’t heal with it. You can tackle higher energy bills better with home improvement, by insulation.”

Discount for large companies

In addition to insulation, the Consumers Association is also calling for a structural reduction in the energy tax for small consumers. Large consumers, or large corporations, pay proportionately lower taxes than households.

“That has to change,” says director Sandra Molinar. “By increasing the burden on the biggest polluters, you encourage them to take conservation measures.” The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an organization of mainly wealthy nations, wrote this year that these energy tax cuts for large corporations slow down the transmission of energy.

electrification

The ratio between energy taxes paid by small and large businesses has been improved by the House of Representatives. It was also decided on Thursday to reduce the energy tax on electricity for companies by 125 million euros.

This will make the tax relatively cheaper for small and medium-sized enterprises. Electricity will also become cheaper compared to gas, which will encourage small and medium-sized businesses to move away from gas.