Dutch grid transport costs rise about 20% in 2027: 89 euro more for electricity and 52 for gas

Every time a household shops for an energy contract it compares the price per kilowatt-hour and per cubic metre, and ignores a line that never appears on a comparison site: the cost of transporting that electricity and gas to the door. On 14 September the regulator ACM published its first forecast of that charge for 2027. An average household will pay roughly 89 euro more a year for electricity transport and about 52 euro more for gas, both around twenty per cent up. ACM states plainly that transport tariffs already make up around thirty per cent of an average household energy bill, and that the networks need to invest some 235 billion euro over fifteen years. The part that matters is that none of this is set by the supplier you choose, so switching company will not remove it.

• Why this particular line is rising: ACM is blunt that the increase is driven for the most part not by network efficiency but by policy choices about the present and future energy system. Offshore wind needs deeper sea cables and new lines on land, new housing districts need new connections, and the rules say those investments are recovered from households and businesses through transport tariffs. Gas runs the other way: fewer people use it, yet the gas network still has to be maintained and renewed, so the same cost is shared among a shrinking group. (source 1)
• The figures and who fixes them: about 89 euro more per household per year for electricity transport, about 52 euro for gas, an average rise of around twenty per cent, on a charge that is roughly thirty per cent of the bill. ACM sets each network operator's transport tariffs annually, on the principle that they recover their efficient costs while households pay no more than necessary. Early in 2026 ACM agreed a new method with representative bodies for both network users and operators, and 2027 is the first year priced under it, the point being that operators recover costs faster and can absorb uncertainty about how those costs develop. (source 1)
• How much depends on where you live: not every operator moves alike. NOS, citing the industry association Netbeheer Nederland, puts the electricity transport increase at 23 per cent for Liander, 17 per cent for Enexis, 17 per cent for Stedin, 11 per cent for Rendo, 0 per cent for Coteq and minus 1 per cent for Westland. Which operator serves you is decided by your address, not by you, so the same contract points in different directions in a Liander area and in a Westland one. (source 2)
• One piece of background that usually gets left out: grid congestion is already costing money. ACM estimates that because companies cannot establish or expand and housing projects cannot proceed, a full grid costs society somewhere between 10 and 40 billion euro a year. This round of increases is therefore not a plain price adjustment but an attempt to clear that queue, which is also why the charge is not going to drop back in the short term. (source 1)

Work it out for yourself: take your last annual statement, multiply your total energy spend by 0.30 to get roughly the transport share, then multiply that by 1.20 for what it becomes in 2027. On ACM's averages, 89 euro for electricity plus 52 euro for gas is 141 euro a year, about 11.75 euro a month. Because this is only about thirty per cent of the bill, a twenty per cent rise works out at roughly six per cent of the whole (0.30 times 0.20), and the other seventy per cent is the part suppliers actually compete on. So the right way to compare 2027 offers is to add that same 141 euro to every quote first, since it is identical in all of them and therefore not a difference, and only then compare unit prices. If your address sits in Liander territory, put 23 per cent into your own transport line rather than the national average; in Westland territory you can treat it as broadly flat. (source 1, source 2)

Hokimi field note: when you are house-hunting, check which network operator covers the address, because that is settled before you sign anything and cannot be changed afterwards. And this is a forecast rather than a final price: ACM formally fixes the tariffs once a year, so look at the official page again before committing to a long contract. The facts above come from ACM's publication of 14 September and NOS's reporting the same day, checked on 18 September 2026.