One hearing, 6 months, no delays: the cabinet reaches for crisis law to unblock the power grid

Objecting to a new power line in the Netherlands will get one hearing, in front of the highest court, with a verdict inside 6 months. The cabinet announced on Friday that it is reaching for the same kind of emergency legislation it last used after the 2008 financial crisis, this time to clear a full electricity grid that is holding up new homes and leaving thousands of businesses waiting for a connection.

“Tackling the full grid is an absolute top priority,” said Jo-Annes de Bat, the state secretary for climate and green growth. “Expanding the grid now takes far too much time. We simply cannot afford that.”

10 decisions, 1 aim

The package is a set of amendments to existing laws rather than a new act, on the reasoning that changing what is already on the books works faster than writing something from scratch. The model is the old Crisis- en herstelwet, the crisis and recovery act that stripped procedure out of construction projects during the last recession. The stated goal is to halve the time it takes to get a new power connection built.

The measures fall into 3 groups.

Fewer and shorter court cases

Today an objection to a new or bigger power line can run for years through several rounds of litigation. From 1 October that ends. An objection is heard once, directly by the highest administrative court. The pro forma appeal, the placeholder filing that buys time before the real grounds are submitted, is abolished. And the court gets a maximum of 6 months to rule.

Anyone who wants to go to court still can, the cabinet stresses, and it says it is watching the balance between legal protection and speed. But the neighbourhood and the grid operator will know where they stand far sooner.

Fewer permits

Part of the mandatory permits for building or expanding high-voltage substations will be scrapped. The cabinet says this alone brings dozens of construction projects forward by several months to 1.5 years.

The bigger move is on nitrogen. Grid expansions are to be exempted from nitrogen permits, the same permits that have stalled housing and road projects across the country since the 2019 court ruling on emissions. The Dutch argument in Brussels has been that building out the grid is what makes lower emissions possible in the first place. The exemption is prepared and will be switched on as soon as there is agreement at EU level, which is the one part of the package the cabinet does not control.

The hard shoulder

The third group is about using what already exists. Every grid keeps spare capacity in reserve to absorb a failure, the way a motorway keeps a hard shoulder. The cabinet is going to let companies drive on part of it. The condition is that they cut their consumption temporarily whenever that reserve is needed to catch an outage.

Alongside that, shifting consumption to other hours of the day, or running the network harder, frees space immediately for homes, schools and other organisations that are currently told to wait. None of that requires a single new cable.

What it means for the bill

This is the other half of a story the regulator told 2 days ago. The Authority for Consumers and Markets expects the network charge on a household bill to roughly double by 2050, driven by exactly this construction programme. Faster building does not make it cheaper; the cables cost what they cost. What it changes is who gets connected when, and how many years a company, a school or a housing developer spends on a waiting list first.

The package was drawn up with the grid operators, business groups, provinces and municipalities, and renewable energy associations. The first change, the single court hearing, takes effect on 1 October.