The Netherlands can be a lot more sustainable by tomorrow. Do you have an idea how many megawatts of energy and billions of euros we could save if we would start tomorrow with aligning the systems of buildings better on the users’ behavior? That’s about 20 to 30 percent energy savings over 60,000 offices.

Priva Campus as retirement homes
Our office is one of the first climate-neutral offices in the Netherlands. The property perfectly suits our activities and purposes, but can later be as easily converted into retirement homes or business premises. With this building we want to show that it is able: sustainable building. The basic construction costs were 14 million euros including the installation of 4 million. We assumed that the installation costs were earned back with energy saving in five to seven years, but it turns out to be in three to five years. There is no entrepreneur who do not wants to go for this, at least not when he himself owns the building. Many developers still think that the risks are too high. They want to recoup the investment quickly because they tend to look at the short term.

Promoting sustainability
The national target is to achieve a 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 compared to 1990. If we continue at the current pace, we will definitely not make this target. While it should be no problem to achieve that goal. We can even make this business in the Netherlands. Achieving that goal is still not a priority. It apparently only gets urgent when the energy prices increase again.

We are doing too little to promote sustainability within the Netherlands. You also see it in the food production. A glass horticulturist produces tomatoes and peppers in greenhouses. Which happens optimal sustainable. We cannot yet call it biological, because the roots stand in water gutters in stead of in the open field, but in that way the water can be re-used correctly. Such a greenhouse requires a decent investment. That makes the tomatoes slightly more expensive than tomatoes grown in the open field in foreign countries which are heavily sprayed. And that higher price is a problem. Because supermarkets go for the lowest price. Consumers should be better informed so that they can make their own choice between sustainably produced or not.