You can go on the roof or the facade!

The majority of company roofs in the Netherlands do not yet have solar panels, while this means that the climate objectives can be achieved faster than with solar parks. How nice would it be if we could use these surfaces effectively to create a shift towards solar roofs and solar facades?

According to Wouter Veldhuis, government advisor for the physical living environment, only ten percent of Dutch company roofs have solar panels. Even less is the percentage of solar facades used, such as that of Studio Solarix on the recently completed innovation project Pharos. On the other hand, there is a lot of subsidies for solar parks. Sixty more were added this year and another 400 are planned.

Why is it often invested in solar parks?
Professor of energy transition Jan Rotmans emphasizes that farmers choose a solar park because they “easily earn about five thousand euros a year on one hectare of land with panels.” He thinks this is understandable, but he also advocates a shift to roofs and facades: ” At the moment, mainly foreign investors are making money from those solar parks. In addition, Friso van der Zee, ecologist at Wageningen University, argues that solar parks do not pay enough attention to maintenance and space, which is detrimental to biodiversity.

Achieving climate targets with solar roofs and solar facades
According to Rotmans, 2.5 billion square meters is available for roofs alone on company roofs, residential roofs and, for example, the port of Rotterdam. In other words, the Netherlands could already achieve the climate targets if we provided half of these hard surfaces with solar panels instead of solar parks!

Will this change in the short term? Work is currently being done on an amendment to the law that will allow municipalities to force roof owners to install panels, but it is expected that this will only take place in a year. We keep our fingers crossed!