The Dutch nitrogen crisis, in numbers

Around 23% of the terrestrial territory of the Netherlands is a protected area; to secure a permit to build near these areas, environmental review about nitrogen impacts are particularly important. The country used to use a system called the Programma Aanpak Stikstof to determine when the nitrogen impact of new construction was compliant with regulations, but a 2019 court ruling determined this program was invalid. Thus began the Dutch Nitrogen Crisis, which has constrained building in the country since. Inferring the impact of this policy change is hard because construction in the following years was probably impacted by covid-19; but a new paper makes some headway by comparing building rates across sites nearer and farther away from the protected areas. It finds the policy change reduced construction by 2.7 permits per quarter, against a mean of 41.4 permits per quarter. This paper is interesting in other ways too - see item #5 for more.