Anoverview of efforts on domestic CO2 emission reduction has
been composed for the Netherlands. It will serve as background information
for international reporting on progress in national climate policy.
The results could contribute to the discussion on supplementarity of
domestic reductions as part of total avoided emissions. The term ?effort?
covers all activities related to domestic reduction, and their consequences,
compared to a situation without a greenhouse problem. The overview regards
both past and future efforts in the period 1990-2010 of all parties
involved, such as households, companies and government. Next to the
indicators avoided emission, cost of emission reduction and government
expenditures, also other non-monetary effort indicators have been investigated.
Main results regard the following. In 2010 emissions would
be 32% higher without all reduction activities, mainly due to energy
savings and about half of it due to policy. Total expenditures related
to emission reduction peak around 2002 at 1.3% of government expenditures.
The fraction spent on renewable energy increases up to three-quarters
of total expenditures in 2010. Average total investments for emission
reduction in the period 1990-2010 equal 3% of total investments. Total
net costs are equal to 0.2% of GDP in 2000 and 0.6% in 2010. Finally,
it proves to be impossible to provide for a systematic overview of non-financial
efforts, both for reasons of definitions and data availability. From
a pragmatically chosen set of indicators it shows that the score of
the Netherlands compared to the EU in total is mixed.