“The current energy crisis does show us that we have a choice to make. To what extent do we want to remain vulnerable to political choices made elsewhere in the world that have a huge impact on our socioeconomic structure?” she added. “We have a choice whether we want to invest in making ourselves independent of this kind of dynamic, and that means investing in the transition.”
Van Veldhoven, who is from the social-liberal branch of Prime Minister Rob Jetten’s minority centrist coalition government, said the Netherlands is pushing for a predictable emissions-cutting pathway toward 2040 to ensure companies can plan their investments.
“In taking those steps in a predictable manner, we also make sure that we don’t leave the technology race just to China or to the U.S., or India,” she said. “You see that in countries all around the world, the implementation of green energy projects is rising. So we have to ensure that we stay the course, otherwise we will fall behind.”
Van Veldhoven hails from the social-liberal branch of Prime Minister Rob Jetten’s minority centrist coalition government. | Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
In addition, the Jetten government advocates for measures to reduce planet-warming pollution from agriculture as part of the upcoming climate legislation package, something the EU has so far side-stepped to avoid drawing the ire of powerful farming associations.
For Van Veldhoven, the geopolitical upheaval is also an argument to “handle with care” any investments in international carbon credits, which allow one country to pay for emissions-cutting projects in another and count the resulting greenhouse gas reductions toward its own climate target.
Despite the resistance of some countries, including the Netherlands, the EU agreed last year to allow the use of such offsets in its new goal to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2040. Up to 5 percentage points of the target and potentially more can be outsourced to other countries via carbon credit purchases from 2036 onward.