On 30 November 2012, the first in a series of bills deriving
from the legislative programme known as STROOM (which in Dutch
means "electricity") was sent to Parliament. This
newsletter discusses the most important amendments to the
Electricity Act 1998, the Gas Act and the Heating Supply Act which
are set out in that bill (parliamentary document
33 493 no. 2, in Dutch).
This bill largely consists of measures which were announced in
the 2011 Energy Report and are together intended to remove certain
concrete bottlenecks identified in the Report. Not all of the
action points set out in the Report and requiring a legislative
amendment are covered in the bill: for example, the bill does not
contain provisions facilitating the privatisation of minority
interests in the national (gas and electricity) transmission system
operators or requiring electricity suppliers to include a certain
percentage of sustainable energy in the energy they supply to their
customers. If it is
