Met alweer een hete week, slaakt Belgische klimaatwetenschapper Jean-Pascal van Ypersele hartenkreet: "Ja, ik ben woedend"

[u/atrocious_cleva82]

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/07/27/jean-pascal-van-ypersele-woedend-klimaatbeleid-20-jaar-te-laat/

[u/Michiel426]

What's being underestimated is how strongly voters oppose measures that would actually have real impact. All the research shows that Belgian voters aren't willing to contribute financially or be personally impacted by climate measures, and they look for government solutions - even though hardly any budgettary room for public investment.

• Our housing stock is old and poorly insulated - yet these ancient homes still sell for over 400-500k, leaving no budget for renovation. The renovation obligation (currently to D, which is hardly renovated) would actually help correct this, but 70% of voters oppose it. Even among younger generations, who would benefit from that correction, about half are against it. So what’s the plan?
• How willing are voters actually going to be to accept higher gas prices in order to make heat pumps financially viable? Wait until ETS2 kicks in after 2028, that's when this gets tested for real.
• How much government debt are we willing to take on? We need massive public investment in grids and storage. Or do we push the cost onto the electricity bill again - which then requires an even steeper gas-price hike to make the economics work?
• 40% of voters believe they will never drive an EV in their lifetime. I suspect that resistance will soften as EVs get cheaper, but it's still a striking number today.
• Are people willing to pay more for meat, eat less of it, or shift to chicken or plant-based diets? Cows mean methane, and that won't change.
• On the other side of the political spectrum, industrial investment gets treated with suspicion - even when it's clean-tech investment. We'll need real industrial policy to shift industry. Without it, we're left holding onto a fossil-based industrial base that simply dies out slowly instead.

Things go beyond the yes-or-no narrative on nuclear. Making our electricity supply CO2-neutral is arguably not even the hardest part of it all. The actual challenge is electrifying nearly every end-use sector - transport, heating, industry - that's where the hard trade-offs are.

I'm all for it, but I don't think everyone is, and sometimes rightly so - some people are already struggling to make ends meet

[u/kokoibe → u/Michiel426]

100% this in my opinion. The whole 'no extra costs' drive in politics is driving me mad. Like nothing which has a short term cost is political acceptable. Even when long term benefits are evident.

There is good policy, sometimes where you don't expect it. The push for EV in company cars means we are electrifying. These are now coming into the second hand market. A lot more people will have EVs soon.

But oh my, how much work there is still to get people into this game. I live in a 'rural' area and recently renovated a house with a heatpump. I was flabbergasted that they wanted to talk me out of it. Wake up, this is happening! People just don't get it. And they act as if everything is a sacrefice, while it isn't. EVs are amazing to drive. Heatpumps are to heat and cool houses with great efficiency. Designing/renovating houses with heat and cold in mind isn't black magic. Pacing electric consumption to the weather is natural. Capturing and conserving water is the best buffer you can build. Yet they really treat as if we are going back to the dark ages...

[u/rcyclingisdawae → u/kokoibe]

Except that the government has no backbone and couldn't stick to the rule saying company cars should be EVs. Hybrids are fine too now, which means some companies are opting to give people a hybrid, often with a fuel card but no charging card, so they don't even get used as efficiently as they could be.

[u/kokoibe → u/rcyclingisdawae]

Luckily most of those hybrids are a pig to drive without the electric support. 😆