Yes, it is very frustrating. The Dutch are exceptionally good at talking the talk, when it comes to renewable energy transition, having years-long talk about the opportunity to become the best, most innovative player (e.g. in solar), and then not walking the walk. Suddenly stopping subsidies because of 'unprecedented success' is the norm, leaving all businesses who had invested out in the cold.

Netherlands is now a laggard in sustainable energy in the EU. I guess we have 'pro-business' liberal-democratic ruling party (VVD) and greenwashing-only companies such as Shell to thank for that. They prefer 'lobbycracy' above democracy.

Electric vehicles are excempt from the road tax in The Netherlands. E.g. in Nord-Holland you'd pay 1400 EUR/yr just in road tolls for a Tesla Model S (according to my searching around 2,250 kg), but you pay 0 EUR because it's an EV under the current policy.

Over a period of some years this easily adds up to what other countries such as the US have been paying out in EV subsidies, add to that that fossil fuels are much more expensive than say the US and it's a very significant subsidy.

Given that the thought of the Netherlands conjures images of happy families in bakfiets {and jealousy on my part) I was startled to learn their per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the worst in the EU.

They're an almost completely urban population with a high standard of living. Of course that needs energy and greenshouse emissions to make happen.

An urban population should emit less GHG than the same population being spread out. And standard of living is not that much different from Denmark (20% less) or the UK (30% less).

You're right for the Netherlands and the developped countries, of course. I confused this rural pop with developping countries' rural pop, which of course is a lot less energy intensive.

As for the standard of living differences, are those numbers similar to the energy-per-capita differences between the same countries ?

Urburnites claim that city living is cleaner (co2 wise) that living in the country

Living near the people and things you need, walking, cycling, and taking electrified public transport to said things, and multi-family dwellings allowing the use of district heating (or heat pumps powered by renewable energy) can drastically reduce your carbon footprint compared to living in the burbs and driving to everything.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwe...

Of course, you _can_ have a low carbon footprint in the country, but it's really hard, because those places are hostile to cycling and walking.

Our many consecutive right-wing governments aren't very eager to meet our CO2 reduction targets. Bad for business, they think. Some tax reduction for electric vehicles and green electricity is the best we got, and they're constantly looking for an excuse to end those.

A big incentive for electric cars comes from cities, though: in Amsterdam, if you get an electric car, you get an electric charging spot in front of your house, which is effectively a private parking spot if you're the only one with an electric car. With the constant shortage of parking spots, this is huge.

The reversal is only for cars priced over 50 000 euro (~ 57000 usd). Even for those cars, you can still get the subsidy for the amount up to 50 000 euro.

The subsidy mostly helped people get a Tesla Model S as a company car. And it is still subsidized for about 17% of 50k, which is 8000 euro a year. While the Tesla Model S is more environmentally friendly than a similar sized gasoline car, buying of smaller electric cars (like the volkswagen e-golf, tesla model 3, etc) should be encouraged more. I don't think it was a bad idea to cap the subsidy at 50 000 euro.

Fair point, I forgot about the cap. The Model 3 is arriving just in time for Tesla sales.

Same in Ontario, our generous EV subsidy was killed by the new right-wing-populist provincial gov't, cap'n'trade eliminated (leaving a $3b hole in the budget), and various green programmes turfed.

Then they had the gall to turn around and promote the fact that Ontario has dropped its CO2 emissions by 25% in the last 10 years. All due to the actions of the previous government that they railed against with "lock her up" type chants.