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 effectively use these surfaces to create a shift to solar roofs and solar facades?

According to Wouter Veldhuis, government advisor for the physical living environment, only ten percent of Dutch commercial roofs are fitted with solar panels. Even less is the percentage of solar facades used, such as those of Studio Solarix on the recently completed innovation project Pharos. On the other hand, solar parks are heavily subsidized. Sixty have been 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 opt for a solar park because they “soon earn around five thousand euros a year from one hectare of land with panels”. He thinks this is understandable, but he also advocates a shift to roofs and facades: ” At the moment, it is mainly foreign investors who earn money from these solar parks, which is all very undesirable.” In addition, Friso van der Zee, ecologist at Wageningen University, argues that with solar parks too little attention is paid to maintenance and space, which does not benefit biodiversity.

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

Will that change in the near future? Work is currently underway on a legislative amendment that would allow municipalities to force roof owners to install panels, but it is not expected to be introduced for a year. We keep our fingers crossed!