Minister Cramer ‘greens’ 525 gigawatt‑hours of electricity

20-01-2010 With the symbolic push of a button, Minister Jacqueline Cramer of the Environment and Spatial Planning ‘greened’ approx. 525 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity on Wednesday 20 January. This is a quantity equivalent to the average annual consumption of 175,000 households. This so-called ‘grid loss’ refers to all the electrical energy required to transmit electricity across the high‑voltage grid of national electricity transmission operator TenneT. With Wednesday’s symbolic act, the Minister and TenneT emphasized the importance they attach to the use of sustainable energy.

When electricity is transmitted, some is always lost in transit. Each year, TenneT consumes about 525 gigawatt-hours of electrical energy in the 220/380 kV grid in order to compensate for these grid losses, which occur in the transmission of electricity via the grid. Given the importance of sustainability for society at large, TenneT has chosen to purchase sustainable energy to offset the grid losses. This is done by buying so-called Guarantees of Origin issued by the TenneT subsidiary CertiQ, allowing the electricity in question to be ‘greened’. Guarantees of Origin constitute the only legal proof that electricity has been generated by sustainable methods.

Minister Cramer performed the symbolic act during a work visit to TenneT on Wednesday. During the visit, the Minister spoke to TenneT CEO Mel Kroon and others about the development of a sustainable energy supply and a number of current TenneT projects. The Dutch government wants the Netherlands to become one of the cleanest and most energy‑efficient countries in Europe. As part of this effort, Minister Cramer is coordinating the ‘Clean & Economical’ programme, which aims to take concrete steps towards creating a sustainable society, by dealing responsibly and economically with the available energy resources and raw materials, cutting back on energy consumption, and using more sustainable sources of energy.