Question/rant incoming (circle the one applicable)

As most/all of you know, from the 1st of july 2022 there will be a capacity tariff on electricity in Flanders. One of the reasons for this quoted by the flemish governement is because if we don’t use the electricity net efficiently, the distributors will have to make significant investments. And they also say that this cost will end up costing the consumer.

> De distributienetbeheerders zouden dan zware investeringen moeten doen om het net betrouwbaar te houden. Dat zou de nettarieven voor alle Vlaamse gezinnen en bedrijven sterk doen toenemen.

But one other reason they mention, is that we are moving towards a CO2-neutral society.

> Er is een evolutie naar een CO2-neutrale samenleving.

My question then is this. Why is using natural gas seemingly encouraged by this governement? If CO2-neutral is the goal, why not encourage people to use electricitric alternatives now? We’re going to have to do without natural gas in 2050 anyway, so why not start now. The energy cost of electricity is only 40% of the total cost, while for natural gas the energy cost is 61%. This to me seems very weird, when you put the quote of a CO2-neutral society next to it. Why does the governement do this?

> De energiefactuur bestaat uit drie grote delen: de energiekosten zelf (40 procent voor elektriciteit en 61 procent voor aardgas)

And don’t somehow make this a gas plant vs nuclear plant debate please, there are enough of those already.

Quoted sources: https://www.vlaanderen.be/energiefactuur-voor-elektriciteit-of-aardgas/nieuwe-nettarieven-capaciteitstarief-voor-gezinnen-en-kleine-bedrijven-vanaf-1-juli-2022, https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2021/09/29/energieprijzen/

3 comments

  1. Using gas as private citizens is actually discouraged. Newly developed areas are no longer receiving gas lines.

    But as usual, our many governments excel in badly managing this. They want us to stop doing a bad thing, but make the good thing harder and more expensive.

  3. The capacity tariff is there to hide that we currently don’t know how we can transition to 100% renewable, let alone how we should do that by 2050. We have some pretty decent ideas about how it theoretically could be done, but all of them require technology (and a policy or legal framework) that have never been used at scale anywhere in the world.

    The electric grid was not designed to be used the way we want to use it now. Upgrades to the grid have been delayed because there is some hope that we won’t have to spend more than a 100 Billion euro’s. For example using home batteries or vehicle to grid technology could still reduce the need to upgrade parts of the grid.

    Upgrades have also been slow because fluvius (or whoever your local grid manager is) failed to recognize the urgency. Permits take forever and there is a shortage of people qualified to work on powerlines.

    Your vrt link states that the actual taxes for electricity are about 1% lower than they are for gas. The part of your bill that involves grid management fees is a lot higher for electricity (and is expected to rise a lot as we add more renewable’s) than it is for gas.

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